The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World [1 ed.] 9789004340985, 9789004340565

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The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World

Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia Founding Editor: C.A.O. Van Nieuwenhuijze

Editor Dale F. Eickelman Advisory Board Fariba Adelkhah (SciencesPo/ceri, Paris) Roger Owen (Harvard University) Armando Salvatore (McGill University)

VOLUME 116

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/seps

The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World Edited By

Roel Meijer Nils Butenschøn

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover image: photo anp/Omar Sanadiki. Residents arrive on foot to inspect their homes in the Wadi Al-Sayeh district at the al-Khalidiyeh area in Homs May 14, 2014. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Meijer, Roel, editor. | Butenschøn, Nils A. (Nils August), 1949-, editor. Title: The crisis of citizenship in the Arab world / edited By Roel Meijer, Nils Butenschøn. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2017] | Series: Social, economic and political studies of the middle east ; V. 116 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2016057393 (print) | lccn 2016059682 (ebook) | isbn 9789004340565 (hardback : alk. paper) | isbn 9789004340985 (E-book) Subjects: lcsh: Citizenship--Middle East. | Citizenship--Arab countries. Classification: lcc jq1758.a92 c75 2017 (print) | LCC JQ1758.A92 (ebook) | DDC 323.60917/4927--dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016057393

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1385-3376 isbn 978-90-04-34056-5 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-34098-5 (e-book) Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Tables x List of Contributors xi Introduction: The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World 1 Roel Meijer and Nils Butenschøn

PART 1 The Arab Social Pact 1 The British Legacy in the Middle East 41 Anthony Gorman 2 Citizenship, Social Pacts, Authoritarian Bargains, and the Arab Uprisings 67 Roel Meijer 3 Syria: Identity, State Formation, and Citizenship 105 Raymond Hinnebusch and Ola Rifai 4 The Tunisian Revolution and the Question of Citizenship 129 Sami Zemni 5 Patronage and Democratic Citizenship in Morocco 149 James Sater 6 Like but not Same as… : Arab Citizenship and the Jordanian Experience 175 Morten Valbjørn 7 Social Contract in the Al Saʿud Monarchy: From Subjects to Citizens? 203 Ida Nicolaisen Almestad and Stig Stenslie 8 Migration and the Marginality of Citizenship in the Arab Gulf Region: Human Security and High Modernist Tendencies 224 James Sater

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9 The Arab Spring and the “Iron Triangle”: Regime Survival and the Conditions of Citizenship in the Arab Middle East 246 Nils A. Butenschøn

PART 2 Concepts of Citizenship 10 Muslim Subjects and the Rights of God 273 Knut S. Vikør 11 The Struggle for Equality and Citizenship in Arab Political Thought: Ideological Debates and Conceptual Change 296 Michaelle Browers 12 Brothers and Citizens: The Second Wave of Islamic Institutional Thinking and the Concept of Citizenship 320 Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen 13 The Ambiguity of Citizenship in Contemporary Salafism 338 Emin Poljarevic 14 Citizenship, Public Order, and State Sovereignty: Article 3 of the Egyptian Constitution and the “Divinely Revealed Religions” 375 Rachel M. Scott

PART 3 Practices of Citizenship 15 The Effects of Patronage Systems and Clientelism on Citizenship in the Middle East 409 Robert Springborg 16 Female Citizenship and the Franchise in Kuwait after 2005 435 Rania Maktabi 17 The Narrow Path: Acts of Citizenship by the Arab Youth Lessons from Egypt and Morocco 471 Assia Boutaleb

Contents 

18 The Bidun Protest Movement as an Act of Citizenship 488 Claire Beaugrand 19 Citizenship Studies and the Middle East 511 Engin F. Isin Index 535

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Acknowledgements This book is the product of the cooperation between Nils Butenschøn at The Norwegian Centre for Human Rights (nchr) at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo and Roel Meijer, Islam Studies, Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and ­Religious Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen. In 2012, under the impression of the Arab uprisings in 2010–2011, they decided to initiate a project to study the concept of citizenship and how it applies to the Middle East and North Africa region. The Arab Uprisings exposed in our view an unprecedented crisis in the relationship between state authorities and the citizens of the Arab countries. There is a need for a deeper understanding of the nature of this crisis. The citizenship approach as presented in this book is an attempt to meet this need. A research project was set up at the nchr headed by Nils Butenschøn. A workshop of international experts was organised in March 2013, hosted by Sami Zemni, Director of the Middle East & North Africa Research Group, Ghent University to discuss the academic and practical potentials of the project. It was decided to follow up the work, and a working group headed by Roel Meijer and Nils Butenschøn was established. Preparations for a larger international conference commenced later that year. Maarten Danckaert joined the working group as research assistant allocated by the nchr. Generous support from the Norwegian and Dutch Ministries of Foreign Affairs made it possible for the project to prepare and organise the three-day international conference “Arab Citizenship in the New Political Era,” hosted by by Université Mohammed v, Rabat-Souissi, in May 28–30, 2014, and represented by Associate Professor Saloua Zerhouni. The conference was made possible also with the support of the Institut Néerlandais au Maroc (nimar), the Centre Jacques Berque (cjb), and the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (noref). We want to especially thank the director of nimar at the time, Jan Hoogland, who played an essential role in facilitating the conference, and the Dutch ambassador in Morocco, Ron Strikker, who enthusiastically supported the project. Ambassador Sverre Johan Kvale at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs encouraged us and supported the project from the very start. Finally, in March 2015, we organised a one-day seminar in Amsterdam with the contributors to the anthology we had invited to contribute to the book after the conference in Rabat. This book is based on the papers presented at the Rabat conference and the seminar in Amsterdam. We are indebted to all the contributors who made this work possible. Alex Mallett did an excellent job with the language editing of the book. We will also like to express our gratitude to Nicolette van der Hoek, editor at Brill, for her advice and keen interest in the project.

List of Tables 8.1  g dp per capita in uae compared (1999–2012) 231 16.1 Proposals on women’s issues by the female MPs in all parliamentary committees May 2009–December 2011 448 16.2 Female MPs collaborating in addressing women’s issues 451 16.3 Suggestions and law proposals presented to the Woman and Family Committee (wfc) according to type of issue defined as related to Kuwaiti women 2006–2013 455

List of Contributors Ida Nicolaisen Almestad is currently a Middle East analyst at the Norwegian Defence Staff. She holds a ma in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oslo, and has worked at the Norwegian Embassy in Riyadh. Claire Beaugrand joined the Institut Français du Proche Orient (Ifpo) in June 2013 after working as a Senior Gulf analyst at the International Crisis Group (icg). Her PhD thesis, written at the London School of Economics (lse), investigated the emergence and persistence of statelessness in Kuwait, as illustrating the shift from a sheikhly state to a national territorial one. Assia Boutaleb is Full Professor of Political Science at University François Rabelais of Tours. Her research topics are social policies and political legitimacy in Egypt and Morocco. She co-edited Le Maroc au présent : D’une époque à l’autre, une société en mutation, Casablanca : Fondation Abdul-Aziz, cjb, 2015. Michaelle Browers is Professor of Politics and International Affairs and directs the Middle East and South Asia Studies Program at Wake Forest University. She is author of Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities (Syracuse University Press, 2006) and Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2009), and has edited and contributed to (with Charles Kurzman) An Islamic Reformation? (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). Nils Butenschøn is Professor of Political Science at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo. He served as Director of the Centre between 1998–2004 and 2009–2014. He was a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Durham, 1993–1994. His research interests include theories of state formation, democracy, and nationalism with a particular focus on the Middle East. Anthony Gorman is Senior Lecturer in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Among his areas of research interest are the rise of radical secular

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politics in Egypt before the First World War, the resident foreign communities of modern Egypt, the history of the Middle Eastern prison and the Middle Eastern press before independence. Raymond Hinnebusch is Professor of International Relations and Middle East Politics and Director of the Centre for Syrian Studies at the University of St. Andrews. He is the author of Syria: Revolution from Above (Routledge, 2001) and co-editor of Syria: From Reform to Revolt (Syracuse University Press, 2014). Engin F. Isin is Chair of International Relations at Queen Mary University of London (qmul) in the School of Politics and International Relations (spir). He is responsible for the establishment of a new international relations and politics department at the University of London Institute in Paris (ulip). The chair is part of a recent decision to establish ba and ma programs as well as a pioneering research program at ulip as a strategic partnership between qmul and ulip. Rania Maktabi is Associate Professor in Political Science at Østfold University College in ­Norway, and researcher at the New Middle East project, University of Oslo. Her field of research is female citizenship, family law, and questions related to the intersection between law, religion, and politics in contemporary mena states. Roel Meijer is Lecturer and teaches Modern History of the Middle East at the Department of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies, Radboud University. He has edited seven volumes on the Middle East and Islam, among them Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement (Hurst, 2009), and The Muslim Brotherhood in Europe (Hurst, 2012). With Nils Butenschøn he is editing a sequel to this volume, The Middle East in Transition: The Centrality of Citizenship, which will be published by Edward Elgar in 2018. Emin Poljarevic is a Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Uppsala University, Department of Theology. His current research focuses primarily on the motivational dynamics of strict religious practices among European and Middle Eastern Muslim youths. He has published works on social mobilisation, Islamism, Salafism and modernity.

List of Contributors

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Ola Rifai holds an MPhil degree from the University of St. Andrews and is the author of several articles on identity politics in Syria. James N. Sater is Professor of Political Science at the American University of Sharjah. He is the author of Civil Society and Political Change in Morocco (Routledge, 2007) and Morocco: Challenges to Tradition and Modernity (Routledge, 2010/2016) which is now in its second edition. His research interests include political participation, political parties, constitutionalism, citizenship, and migration. Rachel Scott is an Associate Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Religion and Culture and aspect (Alliance of Social Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought) at Virginia Tech. Her first book, The Challenge of Political Islam: NonMuslims and the Egyptian State, was published in 2010 by Stanford University Press and she is now working on a new book project tentatively entitled The Egyptian Constitution: The Modern State, Secularism, and Islamic Law. Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic studies. He works on Islam, ulama and media in the Arab World. Robert Springborg is a retired Professor of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, and non-resident Research Fellow of the Italian Institute of International Affairs. Previously he served as the mbi Al Jaber Chair in Middle East Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (soas) in London, where he was also Director of the London Middle East Institute; Director of the American Research Center in Egypt; and University Professor of Middle East Politics at Macquarie University. Stig Stenslie is Assistant Director General/Head of Strategic Analysis at the Norwegian Defence Staff and Associate Professor at the Defence Intelligence University College, Oslo. He is the author of several books on the contemporary Middle East and China, among those, 49 Myths about China (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), Regime Stability in Saudi Arabia: The Challenge of Succession (Routledge, 2011) and Stability and Change in the Modern Middle East (ib Tauris, 2011).

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Morten Valbjørn is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. His research focuses on various dimensions concerning the study of politics in an (un)exceptional Middle East and he is currently leading an interdisciplinary research project on sectarianism in the wake of the Arab revolts. His research has appeared in, among others, Review of International Studies, Democratization, International Review of Sociology, Cooperation & Conflict, Middle East Critique, Mediterranean Studies, Middle East Report, and the Journal of Mediterranean Politics and Foreign Policy. Knut S. Vikør is a Professor of the History of the Middle East and Muslim Africa at the University of Bergen. He has published on the history of trade in the central Sahara, on Sufi movements in North and West Africa (in particular the Sanusiya movement), and is currently working on issues of interpretation and variation in Islamic law. Sami Zemni holds the Francqui Research Chair and is Professor in Political and Social Sciences at the Center for Conflict and Development Studies, Ghent University (Belgium) where he coordinates and leads the Middle East and North Africa Research Group (menarg). His area of expertise is politics within the Middle East and North Africa region, with special reference to political Islam. He focuses mainly on developments in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, democratization in the Arab World as well as conflict in the Arab world. As a former director of the Center for Islam in Europe (cie, 2002–2007), he has also written on issues of migration, integration, racism and Islamophobia.

Introduction: The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World Roel Meijer and Nils Butenschøn Introduction The root causes of political instability and authoritarianism in the Arab countries of the Middle East and North Africa (mena)1 have been debated for a long time, long before the current crisis unleashed by the Arab Uprisings in 2011. The most infamous – and pernicious – angle, Orientalism, focused on ­Islam, and its perceived incompatibility with democracy and modernity, as the ­explanation for the lack of democratisation in the Middle East.2 But there have been optimistic assessments that have alternated with negative views. In the 1950s researchers believed that military regimes would be able to “modernise” and build modern states that would lead to the creation of a “new m ­ iddle class” and achieve “development.”3 During the 1960s and 1970s this trend gradually ­became more pessimistic. Michael Hudson, for instance, highlighted the lack of legitimacy that regimes had and the crisis of relations between those regimes and the people,4 while the most well-known studies of the 1990s f­ocused primarily on the lack of a civil society and placed greater emphasis on a “­vibrant” civil society as the first step towards democracy.5 Once this transition from authoritarian regime to democracy proved to be elusive and civil society less independent, a pessimism again set in, leading to a new trend that argued that authoritarian regimes were “resilient” and capable of “managing,” “containing,” and “controlling” the various challenges 1 In this book the Middle East and North Africa refers to the Arab states in the region if not otherwise stated. 2 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). 3 Walter Z. Laqueur (ed.), The Middle East in Transition: Studies in Contemporary History (­London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958); Manfred Halpern, “Middle Eastern Armies and the New Middle Classes,” in The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries, ed. John J. ­Johnson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 277–316. 4 Michael Hudson, Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven ct: Yale University Press, 1977). 5 Augustus Richard Norton, “Introduction,” in Civil Society in the Middle East. Volume 1, ed. ­Augustus Richard Norton (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1–25; Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “Civil Society and Prospects for Democratization in the Arab World,” in Civil Society in the Middle East. Volume 1, ed. Augustus Richard Norton (Brill 1995), 27–54. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_002

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opposition groups posed.6 Yet the Arab Uprisings proved that these regimes were not indestructible; they could be threatened, transformed, and toppled. It was clear that resilience theories had focused too much on the state itself and too little on agency and means of resistance amongst the population.7 As a result, the “stability” of authoritarian regimes was less well rooted than many had believed,8 and social movement theory, which had been applied for the first time in the 1990s, experienced a resurgence.9 Five years after the Arab Uprisings, the pendulum has returned to the state of pessimistic gloom that produced resilience theories. However, whatever the state of the new ­authoritarian regimes and their ability to re-assert themselves, it is clear that the stability that was often ascribed to them has been thoroughly undermined. The sources of the deep political, social, and cultural crisis that had been simmering beneath the surface for some time are not temporary and not ­easily solvable. The research on the Arab Uprisings has come up with numerous ­explanations, none of which are fully convincing. These include demography and the youth bulge; the spread of new media and the effect of Twitter and the Internet; the introduction of a neoliberal economy in the 1980s and rising unemployment, with the related destruction of the middle classes, mounting division between rich and poor, and unprecedented corruption; privatisation and mounting grievances among the working class; the interference by external powers and the instability and misery created by regional wars; the “deep state” or the “robustness” of the state and its greater capacity for repression than elsewhere; gender inequality and exclusion; or a combination of some or all of these elements.10

6 7 8 9

10

Steven Heydemann, Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World (Analysis Paper No. 13, The Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, October 2007). Michelle Pace and Francesco Cavatorta, “Arab Uprisings in Theoretical Perspective,” M ­ editerranean Politics 17 (2012): 125–138. In the 2000s numerous books appeared on the political system in the Middle East and North Africa with the term “stability” in their title. Joel Beinin and Frédéric Vairel (eds), Social Movements, Mobilization and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013); Jeroen Gunning and Ilan Zvi Baron, Why Occupy a Square? People, Protests and Movements in the Egyptian Revolution (London: Hurst, 2013). To mention only a few: Marc Lynch (ed.), The Arab Uprisings Explained: New Contentious Politics in the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014); Mehran ­Kamrava (ed.), Beyond the Arab Spring: The Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East (London: Hurst, 2014); Rex Brynen et al., (eds), Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and ­Democratization in the Arab World (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2012).

Introduction

3

This book does not present a unified explanation for the deep political, e­ conomic, and cultural crisis in the mena region; we recognise that the crisis as an empirical phenomenon is too complex and multifaceted to be caught in a single explanatory model. Instead, the book brings together contributions from different academic traditions and disciplines, sharing a new approach to the crisis as an analytical challenge. We approach the current crisis as a c­ risis of citizenship, as a fundamental crisis in the relationship between citizens and the state in its different aspects and dimensions. Thereby – we believe – a broader and deeper, and yet more coherent, analysis emerges. Whereas the state should be the source of services, protection, upholding the rule of law, emancipation, and inclusion of its citizens, it has instead become the centre of iniquity, corruption, marginalisation, and repression, working to the benefit of the elite and the exclusion of the vast majority. In the mena region ­citizens have almost no influence on the state, and in the rare cases they do it is through patronage, clientelism, and informal relations, all of which undermine or ­severely damage the notion of citizenship. On the other hand, citizenship also represents a relationship between citizens themselves. Citizens constitute a civil, social, and political community, but in the mena region these communities have come under severe pressure for religious, economic, and p ­ olitical ­reasons, often leading to sectarian strife, class struggle, and ethnic ­exclusion. In many ways the authoritarian bargain that has been the foundation of ­society has collapsed, and people are searching for a new social contract with the state and between themselves. The Arab Uprisings can be regarded as an attempt to achieve such a social pact, one that is founded on a more inclusive and ­equitable basis, ­entailing new notions of citizenship. The citizenship approach draws on sociology, political science, legal studies, anthropology, history, political philosophy, and other disciplines that analyse diverse aspects of the lives of citizens as they function in a web of relations that regulate their conduct and affect their attitudes, while at the same time giving them the tools to alter these relationships.11 In this dialectical relationship between subjection and contention, citizenship is constructed and ­reconstructed in a constantly changing legal, social, and political process in which power and culture play an important role. Citizenship studies has a long history in North America and Europe, and the introduction of citizenship studies to the Middle East should be based on insights from these original areas, while also adapting them to the specific conditions of the mena region. These insights are related to citizenship in 11

New ground-breaking studies have appeared in the Journal of Citizenship Studies.

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general,12 comparative studies,13 minority studies,14 gender studies,15 political philosophy,16 and migration and globalisation,17 among others. With the exception of a few pioneering examples,18 little has been published on citizenship in the Arab Middle East and North Africa, and these have usually only examined very specific topics, and even then rarely systematically. This book is a renewed attempt to introduce citizenship studies and the 12

13

14 15

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Several anthologies have been published on citizenship in its diverse forms. See Richard Bellamy and Antonino Palumbo (eds), Citizenship (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010); Engin F. Isin and Bryan S. Turner (eds), Handbook of Citizenship Studies (London: Sage, 2002); Bryan S. Turner (ed.), Citizenship and Social Theory (London: Sage, 1993); Birte Siim and Judith Squires (eds), Contesting Citizenship (London: Routledge, 2008); James Tully, On Global Citizenship: James Tully in Dialogue (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). Andreas Fahrmeir, Citizenship: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Concept (New Haven ct: Yale University Press, 2007); Charles Tilly and Lesley J. Wood, Social Movements, 1768–2008 (Boulder: Paradigm, 2009); Roger Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and G ­ ermany (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1992). Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Surya Monro and Diane Richardson, “Citizenship, Gender and Sexuality,” in Handbook of Political Citizenship and Social Movements, ed. Hein Anton van der Heijden (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2014), 60–85. Quentin Skinner and Bo Stråth (eds), States and Citizens: History, Theory, Prospects (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What is the Right Thing to Do? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009). Christian Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010); Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012). The few general books on citizenship in the mena region are: Nils Butenschøn et al., (eds), Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000), in which see especially Nils Butenschøn, “State, Power, and Citizenship in the Middle East: A Theoretical Introduction,” 3–27. See also Uri Davis, Citizenship and the State: A Comparative Study of Citizenship Legislation in Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon (London: Ithaca Press, 1999); Suad Joseph (ed.), G ­ ender and Citizenship in the Middle East (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000); Valentine M. Moghadam, Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East, 3rd ­edition (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2013); Gianluca P. Parolin, Citizenship in the Arab World, Kin, Religion and Nation-State (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009); Andrew F. March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping C ­ onsensus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Rachel Scott, The Challenge of Political Islam: Non-Muslims and the Egyptian State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010); Roel Meijer, “Political Citizenship and Social Movements in the Arab World,” in Handbook of Political Citizenship and Social Movements, ed. Hein Anton van der Heijden, (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2014), 628–660.

Introduction

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­focus on citizenship as central themes in the mena region by exploring what this approach can contribute to the debate on the current political crisis in the region. A problem of citizenship studies is that, similar to so many other ­disciplines developed in the West and introduced into the mena region in the past, such as modernisation theory or, more recently, civil society theory and social movement theory,19 its overall assumptions are based on the specific liberal democratic European and/or North American political systems and societies. Some researchers regard this as a positive, inherent feature of citizenship studies. They argue that full citizenship can only exist in liberal ­democracies, where equal opportunities exist (at least in theory), the rule of law prevails, a political culture of mutual trust dominates, and people identify with the political community. Moreover, true citizenship presupposes the rise of an autonomous, free subject and the erosion of kinship and other primordial bonds. When people do not enjoy the same rights and do not share membership of a political ­community they should be regarded as “subjects” rather than citizens.20 Paradoxically, the same argument has come from the Global South, where citizenship is regarded as a typically Western concept that is ­inapplicable to non-Western environments.21 This book argues otherwise. Citizenship studies has developed instruments to analyse politics and state-society relations wherever modern bureaucratic states that rule over a delineated territory have emerged. As a result, the state’s power over its subjects has increased to such an extent that they are made members of a political community, sometimes unwittingly and/or unwillingly, as state measures directly interfere in their daily lives, forcing these citizens to focus on the state and official political institutions in order to exert political influence. In this model of the modern nation-state the state’s monopoly of power is confirmed by a democratic mandate from the citizens. Consequently, the terms and conditions of citizenship are defined by a “contract” between citizens and the state in which the citizens’ civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights, as well as their duties, are laid out. However, as these forms of interaction differ from one country to another depending on state 19

20 21

Quintan Wiktorowicz, “Introduction: Islamic Activism and Social Movement Theory,” in Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, ed. Quintan Wiktorowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 1–36; Beinin and Vairel, Social Movements; Michel Camau and Frédéric Vairel (eds), Les soulèvements populaires dans le monde arabe (Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2014). Peter Kivisto and Thomas Faist, Citizenship: Discourse, Theory and Transnational Prospects (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 50. Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

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­ olicies, their implementation and range, as well as the varying responses of p the ­citizens, have produced different forms of citizenship and citizenship regimes. As we will see, state policies have resulted in different degrees of inclusion and exclusion, leading to different combinations of rights and duties among citizens of any particular country. These variations in inclusion and exclusion of social classes, gender, ethnic, and religious groups have led to what has been called “graded” or “differentiated citizenship,” producing “second class citizens,” “child-citizens,” and even “non-citizens.” These trends are discernible both in Europe and the United States as well as in the Global South, but produce different citizen regimes, making comparisons possible and even ­fruitful. The focus on citizen-state relations therefore provides unique insights into the broader political systems, cultures, and social and economic structures of societies. There is another reason why we consider a citizenship approach to the current crisis in the Middle East and North Africa to be important: people, political organisations, social movements, and professional organisations in the region itself employ the notion of citizenship (muwatana) and other related terms, something that has been particularly clear since the Arab Uprisings in 2011. In fact, many of the chapters in this volume do not directly engage with citizenship studies and theory as such but provide crucial insights into the concepts of citizenship in the Arab world and the way citizenship is formed. Dignity (karama), liberty (hurriyya), equality (masawaʾ), rights (huquq), and social justice (al-ʿadala al-ijtimaʿiyya) are all recognised as having been central concepts in the Arab Uprisings, and terms such as the people (al-shaʿb) and madaniyya (civility) played a central role in the huge demonstrations that were seen throughout the region, from Morocco to Bahrain.22 The slogan “the 22

To mention only a few publications that cover several countries in the mena region: Mouin Rabbani, “The Year of the Citizen,” in The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of the Old Order? ed. Bassam Haddad et al., (London: Pluto Press, 2012), 33–36; Mervat F. Hatem, “The Arab Spring Meets the Occupy Wall Street Movement: Examples of Changing ­Definitions of Citizenship in a Global World,” Journal of Civil Society 8 (2012): 401–415; ­Benoît Challand, “Citizenship against the Grain: Locating the Spirit of the Arab Uprisings in Times of Counterrevolution,” Constellations 20 (2013): 169–187; Nils A. Butenschøn, “Arab Citizen and the Arab State: The ‘Arab Spring’ as a Critical Juncture in Contemporary Arab Politics,” Democracy and Security 11 (2015): 111–128; Anja Hoffmann and Christoph König, “Scratching the Democratic Façade: Framing Strategies of the 20 February Movement,” Mediterranean Politics 18 (2013): 1–22; Roel Meijer and Maarten Danckaert, “Bahrein: Dynamics of a Conflict,” in Arab Spring: Negotiating in the Shadow of the Intifadat, ed. William I. Zartman (Athens ga: University of Georgia Press, 2015), 209–248; Marie Duboc, “Challenging the Trade Union, Reclaiming the Nation: The Politics of Labor Protest in

Introduction

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people demand the fall of the regime” expresses claims of popular sovereignty and the right to have rights, which is the foundation of citizenship. Protests were directed against infringement of civil rights by the emergency laws, demanding freedom of association, the right to establish political parties, the rule of law and accountability of authorities and transparency of money spent.23 On a deeper level, people entertain vaguer, less defined notions of rights and justice that feed into citizenship.24 A number of contributions to this volume demonstrate that citizenship and terms related to notions of citizenship reemerged prior to and during the Arab Uprisings. For instance, certain currents within the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wasatiyya trend in Egypt and Syria adopted the concept of the civil state (al-dawla al-madaniyya) and equal citizenship; the bidun (those without citizen documents) in Kuwait found new ways of ­expressing resistance against their marginalisation; youth in Egypt and Morocco reconnected with “the street” and demonstrated extraordinary forms of social responsibility by educating the general public who, for the first time, were considered to be sharing a common citizenship; while demonstrators in Tunisia and elsewhere demonstrated a new political awareness and made claims to rights, expressing these in various ways, including performances and “acts of citizenship.”25 The chapters in this volume build on other studies that have identified a ­general politicisation of society reflecting an increasing sense of citizenship. They show that youth stood up against paternal authority; employees ­denounced petty office tyrants and corruption, demanding “cleansing” (tathir)

23 24

25

Egypt, 2006–11,” in Beyond the Arab Spring: The Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East, ed. Mehran Kamrava (London: Hurst, 2014), 223–248; Salwa Ismail, “The Syrian Uprising: Imagining and Performing the Nation,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11 (2011): 538–549; Charles Tripp, The Power and the people: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Maha Abdelrahman, Egypt’s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings (London: Routledge, 2015), 37. These notions have been analysed by Asef Bayat in Life as Politics: How Ordinary ­People Change the Middle East (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010); Diane Singerman, ­Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo (­Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Cilja Harders, “The Informal Social Pact: The State and the Urban Poor in Cairo,” in Politics from Above, Politics from Below: The Middle East in the Age of Economic Reform, ed. Eberhard Kienle (London: Saqi, 2003), ­191–213; ­Armando Salvatore and Dale Eickelman (eds), Public Islam and the Common Good (Leiden: Brill, 2004). Engin F. Isin and Greg M. Nielsen (eds), Acts of Citizenship (London: Zed Press, 2008).

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of the work place;26 university personnel, such as the March 9 Group in Egypt, protested against state control of universities; Egyptian judges marched against election fraud and state interference in the judiciary; Moroccan v­illagers felt emboldened to stand up against private companies, municipal governments, and corruption;27 special favours given to policemen were refused;28 ­minorities, such as the Copts in Egypt29 and the Amazigh in Morocco,30 demonstrated for equal legal and cultural rights; normal citizens protested against deteriorating housing conditions, rising food prices, break down of health care, ­insufficient supply of potable water, and daily injustices.31 Many of these actions produced new forms of expression and repertoires of contention: ­petitions, hunger strikes, occupations, strikes, sit-ins, public statements, sabotaging public f­acilities, Facebook group networks. Informal protests included blocking roads, burning tyres, blocking entrances to government entrances, and other performances such as waving flags in order to assert their loyalty to the nation while demanding change in the political order. These works also point out that the Arab Uprisings had a long history and are often connected to the emergence of social movements. By nature new social movements are focused on citizenship, liberties and rights, and the recognition of identity and not on acquiring state power. The names of many of these organisations reflect the struggle for rights. In Egypt, rural protest against eviction was organised by the Land Centre for Human Rights; the Centre for Trade Union and Worker Services (ctuws) and the ­Coordinating Committee for Trade Union and Workers Rights and Liberties were crucial for the formation of Egyptian independent trade unions;32 the Doctors Without Rights played an important role in defending the rights of 26

Anne Alexander and Mostafa Bassiouny, Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers and the Egyptian Revolution (London: Zed Press, 2014), 284–318. 27 Koenraad Bogaert, “The Revolt of Small Towns: The Meaning of Morocco’s History and Geography of Social Protest,” Review of African Political Economy 42 (2015): 124–140. 28 Lila Abu Lughod, “Living the ‘Revolution’ in an Egyptian Village: Moral Action in a ­National Space,” American Ethnologist 29 (2012): 21–25. 29 Mariz Tadros, Copts at the Crossroads: The Challenges of Building Inclusive Democracy in Egypt (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2013). 30 Bruce Maddy Weizman, “Ethno-politics and Globalisation in North Africa: The Berber Culture Movement,” Journal of North Africa 11 (2006): 71–84; Bruce Maddy Weizman, “Arabization and its Discontents: The Rise of the Amazigh Movement in North Africa,” Journal of the Middle East and Africa 3 (2012): 109–135. 31 Abdelrahman, Egypt’s Long Revolution, 52–72. 32 Joel Beinin, Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 47–48.

Introduction

9

doctors against the political hijacking of the professional organisation of doctors by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1990s; Mohamed ElBaradei’s National Association for Change (nac) of 2010 demanded political rights.33 In Morocco, over the previous decade the coordinating committees (tansiqiyyat) organised protest against price rises. New organisations sprang up with characteristic names such as Alternative Movement for Individual Liberties (mali) and the different organisations of the unemployed graduates (chômeurs-diplômés) ­demanding the right to work. Since their establishment in the Arab world in the 1970s human rights organisations played a significant role in promoting the language of rights in the region. Many human rights organisations were a­ ctive in the Arab Uprisings such as the Moroccan Association of Human Rights (amdh) or the Tunisian League of Human Rights (ltdh).34 They linked civil society with social movements. All these activities are reflected in new active, participatory citizenship. As Alexander and Bassiouny make clear the Egyptian strike committees had to organise meals, sleeping quarters, secure machinery from sabotage, negotiate with management, inform the strikers, and self-manage production, and ward off intimidation by state institutions.35 Their activities were democratically decided. The establishment of independent unions, starting in 2009, required similar skills. In her book on the Tunisian General Labour Union (ugtt), Hèla Yousfi shows lower cadre leaders of the trade union were able to play a crucial role in the organisation and dissemination across the country of the uprisings and respond to the demands of their members, in contrast to its co-opted elite leadership who had lost all contact with the normal members of the ugtt.36 In Morocco, the February 20 Movement consisted of 100 different civil society organisations, trade unions and political parties which formed the national committee for support. Although it is clear from many accounts that the left played a crucial role in the uprisings, the pressure to unify and form coalitions, joint committees and “fronts” between highly diverse and often former opponents led to general slogans and common themes that supported inclusive programs and enhanced citizen rights. This was the case with many cross-ideological coalitions that were formed in Egypt between 2000 and 2011. For this to happen, both the left and the Islamic movements had to make important steps towards a centrist 33 Abdelrahman, Egypt’s Long Revolution, 38. 34 Hoffmann and König, “Scratching the Democratic Façade,” 7. 35 Alexander and Bassiouny, Bread, Freedom, Social Justice. 36 Hèla Yousfi, L’UGTT, une passion tunisienne: Enquête sur les syndicalistes en révolution (2011–2014) (Paris: Karthala, 2015), 57–97.

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position that accepted political and social pluralism, the rule of law, f­ reedom of speech and organization. This process took a generation to emerge. In Egypt, it depended on the rise of the liberal current within the Muslim Brotherhood and the centrist (Wasatiyya) trend to produce such groups as the Wasat ­Party.37 In Tunisia, it was not until 2005 that Ennahda had become acceptable for secularists enough to form a coalition in the Collectif.38 In Morocco, the gradual inclusion of Party of Justice and Development (pjd) since 1992 into the political process encouraged more liberal trends around figures such as Ahmed Raysouni to emerge which embraced notions of citizenship and concepts based on the civil state (al-dawla al-madaniyya) as opposed to the religious state (al-dawla al-diniyya) and Islam as a complete system (nizam kamil). Notions such as “pious citizens” and the refocusing on politics instead of applying Islamic law were essential preliminary steps to form cross-ideological coalitions.39 By 2005, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood had come to the same conclusions and accepted equal citizenship in its new program, regardless of one’s ethnic or religious background.40 Without these previous moves towards an Islamic humanism and acceptance of human agency and greater space for politics as an independent, indeterminate field for pragmatic solutions based on equality and inclusion these coalitions would not have been possible. Their influence was apparent during the Arab Uprisings. For instance, during the first five months of protest against the Asad regime in Syria the opposition stressed national unity and shared citizenship between Sunnis and Alawis in an attempt to create a broad coalition against the regime.41 In Morocco, February 20 Movement explicitly came up with slogans focusing on strengthening citizen rights and stated the right to accountability, work, and rule of law. 37

38

39

40

41

Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, “Strategy and Learning in the Formation of Egypt’s Wasat ­ arty,” Comparative Politics 36 (2004): 205–28; Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, “The Muslim P Brotherhood and Democratic Transition in Egypt,” Middle East Law and Governance J­ ournal 3 (2011): 204–223. Francesco Cavatorta and Fabio Merone, “Moderation Through Exclusion? The Journey of the Tunisian Ennahda from Fundamentalist to Conservative Party,” Democratization 20 (2013): 857–875. Malika Zeghal, Islamism in Morocco: Religion, Authoritarianism and Electoral Politics (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2009), 187–194; Eva Wegner, Islamist Opposition in Authoritarian Regimes: The Party of Justice and Development in Morocco (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2011). Roel Meijer, “The Problem of the Political in Islamist Movements,” in Whatever Happened to the Islamists? Salafis, Heavy Metal Muslims and the Lure of Consumerist Islam, ed. Amel Boubekeur and Olivier Roy (London: Hurst, 2012), 27–60. Salwa Ismail, “The Syrian Uprisings.”

Introduction

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Even in Saudi Arabia, a country not known for its strong participation in the Arab Uprisings, Islamic modernists were supportive of rights of citizens versus the privileges of the royal family, introducing a “language of rights.”42 Especially during the initial stages of the revolution, highly different ideological groups found each other in a common struggle against police torture, arrests, emergency laws, and in favor of accountability, legalisation of political parties, the rule of law, and the guarantee of employment and social welfare. This is not to say that the struggle for citizenship and the establishment of a new social contract in the Arab world was a success. In the end, the forces supporting a new citizenship regime were too weak. Tunisia was the only country were, after considerable problems, the dominant religious party Ennahda together with the secular parties were capable, of signing a new social contract based on equal citizenship (but guaranteeing weak social rights) when a new constitution was inaugurated in January 2014. Elsewhere the coalitions between the secular and Islamist movements broke down, most significantly in Egypt. After the fall of President Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011 the Muslim Brotherhood quickly made a deal with the military and secular movements, paving the way for inclusive elections and the Muslim Brotherhood as the new dominating political force in the country. The less inclusive rule under President Muhammad Morsi in turn created a huge backlash among the secularists who were willing to work with the military to topple the Morsi government in a coup d’etat in June-July 2013. In Morocco, the Islamist Justice and Development Party (pjd) was already co-opted by the monarchy before the uprising led by the February 20 Movement, hoping to reform it from within; it never was part of the February 20 Movement. In Libya, the early forms of support for a new regime based on equal citizenship failed after a dramatic and violent sequence of events bringing in massive bombing by nato countries and the killing of President Muammar al-Gaddafi by rebels October 20, 2011. Consequently, the country fell apart in regional and tribal divisions. In Syria, the regime succeeded in undermining any attempt to r­eform the political system and base it on inclusive, common and equal citizenship, setting in motion the most devastating civil war the Middle East has experienced in modern times. In Yemen, the uprising failed, bringing on a­ nother devastating civil war that involves old as well as new contenders for power, while Algeria remained aloof from the turmoil after its own traumatic experience with uprisings in the 1990s. Among the Gulf monarchies Bahrain was the most affected. Massive demonstrations with demands for d­ emocratisation, 42

Madawi Al-Rasheed, Muted Modernists: The Struggle over Divine Politics in Saudi Arabia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

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accountability and equal rights led by Shiʿa majority groups was violently supressed by the Sunni monarch with the support by troops from Saudi Arabia. What these experiences demonstrate, apart from the political dimension of changing ideologies, coalition formations, and political struggle, is that the establishment of citizenship regimes based on equality and the rule of law is severely hampered by multifaceted web of structural and systemic factors discussed throughout this volume. One of the most damaging and most i­ ngrained factors is clientelism and patronage relations. Nowhere else do vertical relations of dependence have such disastrous effects on notions of citizenship and horizontal solidarity as in the Arab region. The other is sectarianism and its exclusionary and divisionary politics. Although the interest in sectarianism has become the dominant trend in research on the Arab world, the fact that sectarianism has re-emerged attests to the failure to establish inclusionary citizenship regimes in the past, which needs explanation. The same applies for the authoritarian regimes. The heavy emphasis on mechanisms of control and pre-emption in resilience theories needs a historical analysis of how these regimes came about and why they have become exclusionary. The third f­ actor that has hampered the development of equal citizenship is foreign and regional intervention. There is perhaps no other part in the world where foreign ­intervention has had such a negative influence as in the Arab world, supporting sectarianism, minority regimes, class differences and economic and political dependence, thereby enhancing weak state structures, authoritarianism, and lack of legitimacy of the political elite. We believe that focussing on citizenship, citizen-state relations, as well as relations between citizens is a fruitful way not only of understanding the Arab Uprisings as a critical juncture in Arab politics and providing crucial insights into the dramatic events that have unfolded since 2011, but they are also the key to understanding the modern history of the Arab world. Guiding Elements Extent, Content and Depth Keith Faulks has made a useful distinction between three elements that cover central aspects of citizenship and are helpful in analysing citizenship regimes in the Arab world: extent, content, and depth.43 Extent concerns the issue of formal and legal membership of the political community and the dialectical process between exclusion and closure on the one hand, and inclusion and incorporation into society and the political community on the other. It addresses the issue of who is eligible for citizenship and who is denied the right to become a full member of society and the 43

Keith Faulks, Citizenship (London: Routledge, 2000), 7.

Introduction

13

­ olitical community and to enjoy the full rights that citizenship entails. Extent p thus ­determines one’s status. Needless to say, extent has in itself a long history and differs from country to country. However, historically, in Europe and the United States the general trend has been towards greater inclusion and the expansion of political rights from just the privileged elite to larger sections of the population.44 According to Kivisto and Faist, it is the transformation of outsiders into citizens that has marked the process of inclusion in the West.45 It also touches upon the criteria for inclusion or exclusion, as, for instance, in Rogers Brubaker’s famous46 but widely criticised distinction between the civic, territorial principle (jus solis) associated with the French republican tradition, whereby theoretically everyone under the jurisdiction of the state could become citizen, and the jus sanguinis principle of German tradition that based citizenship on ethnicity.47 The civil rights movement in the United States marked an important step towards acquiring equal rights. “Recognition” of ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity was one of the means by which one could be incorporated into American citizenry. But extent also covers new forms of discrimination, marginalisation, and exclusion, which are becoming increasingly globally connected.48 In the Arab world, extent has had a completely different trajectory than in Europe or the United States. The Arab world first had to make a transition from an empire built on diversity49 to a colonial regime that was based on exclusion and then build homogeneous nation-states out of this diversity. Neither the nationalist movements, nor the authoritarian states, nor the Islamist movements were able to meet the challenge of building inclusionary citizenship regimes based on equality and the recognition of religious, cultural, and political diversity. Content is related to the mixture of rights, duties, and obligations of citizenship. In contrast to extent, which relates to formal citizenship, content is concerned with substantive citizenship. Historically, the emphasis had been on the duties and obligations in the Greek polis because citizens (males) were presumed to be active citizens. During the French Revolution for the first time rights were defined in the Declaration of Citizen and the Nation and the 44 Fahrmeir, Citizenship. 45 Kivisto and Faist, Citizenship, 21. 46 Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood. 47 For a critique, see Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration, 17–20. 48 For an excellent discussion on the issue between James Tully, Anthony Lade, Bonnie ­Honig, Duncan Bell, and others, see Tully, On Global Citizenship. 49 Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perpective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

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­ rinciple of equal rights supplanted privilege. The “people” as a whole emerged p on the historical scene as a source of legitimacy, and sovereignty was no longer vested solely in the monarch. This meant that the relationship between state and citizen became much more complex, intensive, and intrusive. In the new citizen regime, citizens paid taxes directly to the state, obeyed the same state laws, were conscripted into national armies, and were asked to sacrifice their lives for the nation. In return, citizenship rights were expanded and deepened, resulting in a dialectical relationship between subject and citizen, being objects of power and agencies to power. However, with the introduction of a neoliberal economy these social rights have come under severe pressure and the emphasis has been increasingly limited to civil rights or what has been called “negative liberties,” i.e. freedom from state interference. In this respect immigration has also influenced the mixture of rights and duties. Whereas during the heyday of the nation-state citizens were required to adhere to the same religion, speak the same language, and uphold the same sense of history and identity, this changed with increased migration and the emergence of multicultural societies and new forms of identification, loyalty, and integration. Novel forms of citizenship include hyphenated nationalities, hybrid identities, and a thin “constitutional loyalty” rather than undifferentiated loyalty and assimilation to a complete culture. With regard to content, the Arab world shows similarities as well as marked differences with the European and American models. While it also has experienced the rise of a strong nationalism, based on cultural, linguistic, and political homogeneity, it never gave birth to a democratic political structure that allowed for diversity and freedom of speech and organisation. In addition, the emphasis on social rights at the expense of civil and political rights has laid a heavy burden on the citizenship regimes once economic austerity measures were introduced in the 1980s and the “authoritarian bargain” was gradually d­ ismantled. The main opposition, the Islamist movement, hardly presented an alternative. It developed a weak discourse of citizenship that was not based on rights but on a religious identity that was culturally exclusionary and politically authoritarian. The modernist, humanitarian current always remained a minority trend and only turned into the Wasatiyya trend in the 1980s. Depth is closely related to the commitment of citizens and their level of participation in the public sphere. What is demanded of citizens, what are their social and political responsibilities, and in what way can they ­contribute to the “common good”? An important aspect of depth has been the emergence of the public sphere and the right to openly discuss and participate in matters of common ­interest. It is associated with the rise of civil society and

Introduction

15

independent horizontal o­ rganisations that individuals could join voluntarily. In Europe the rise of the public sphere is situated in the eighteenth century with the rise of newspapers and intellectuals. It expanded in the nineteenth century with the rise of national newspapers, the printing press, cheap books, salons for the middle classes and intellectuals, and the rise of trade unions and social movements. As with d­ ependence/independence the dichotomy between the public and the private spheres was another way of excluding women from becoming full participatory citizens. Emancipation from the private sphere meant greater p ­ articipation in the public sphere. Ideologically, depth is reflected in republican, liberal, and communitarian notions of citizenship, with the first and last upholding a “thick” concept of active citizenship and the latter a “thin” passive one.50 In contemporary citizenship studies, citizenship is not only constituted by passive and active rights but must be acquired by definite and specific “acts of citizenship.” In the modern Arab world, commitment of the citizen has fluctuated widely. While in the colonial struggle for independence citizens were mobilised and subjected to centrally led organisations, after independence the emphasis was on passive citizenship with limited rights. It is only during the last three decades that different forms of active citizenship were developed and notions of “thick” citizenship emerged. The elements extent, content, and depth are not only instruments to analyse different citizenship regimes but also related to the issue of power and the question of who determines and controls extent, content, and depth. Is it the state that controls and regulates citizenship “from above,” or is the people, social movements, contestations, long term struggles, and interest groups that determine citizenship “from below”? The former leads to “passive” citizenship, the latter to “active” citizenship. But mostly the two go together. It is only at rare moments such as revolutions, the struggle for independence, or phenomena such as the Arab Uprisings that the movement from below dominates and acquires, for a brief period, the upper hand, meaning that existing citizenship regimes can be overturned. Contribution What do these general principles and dimensions of citizenship and citizenship studies contribute to the study of the Arab world and the present political crisis? How should they be adjusted to meet the specific historical, cultural, sociological, and political characteristics of the region? 50

For an analysis of concepts of citizenship in political currents, see the authors referred to in note 16.

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We believe that the citizenship approach as outlined here allows us to explore the essence of the current crisis of the Middle East. We do not seek one specific explanation of this crisis, but open up for a number of explanatory strategies for a fuller comprehension of the crisis in time and space, centered around the concept and elements of citizenship. In this way we hope to contribute to and improve current theories in the field. Firstly, in contrast to the prevalent theories of authoritarian resilience that focus on the Middle Eastern authoritarian state and its power,51 citizenship studies is better able to take into consideration the effects state policies have on citizens and how these policies are formulated, constructed, manipulated, and supported by policing and surveillance. Moreover, it takes into account the responses of social actors, their notions of themselves and the ways in which they are organised, and the manifold forms of resistance and contestation, both passive and active, of state power. Secondly, in contrast to civil society theorists who, in the 1990s particularly, regarded civil society as the panacea for democratisation and pushing back the power of the state in the Middle East,52 citizenship studies take into account marginalised groups, informal networks that have no legal status and do not always have clear ideas about their relations with the state but nonetheless are s­ignificant for their actions, and “acts of citizenship” that influence the general concept and ­practice of ­citizenship. Thirdly, it can contribute to the transition debate.53 Daniel B ­ rumberg, Oliver Schlumberger, Morten Valbjørn and others have correctly pointed out that transition theory, when applied to the Middle East, has been mistaken by taking the illusion of a transition to democracy for reality and b­ eing far too optimistic, a Western

51 Heydemann, Upgrading Authoritarianism; Oliver Schlumberger, “Arab Authoritarianism: Debating the Dynamics and Durability of Nondemocratic Regimes,” in Debating Arab ­Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Non-democratic Regimes, ed. Oliver Schlumberger (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 1–18; Daniel Brumberg, “Democratization in the Arab World? The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy,” Journal of Democracy 13 (2002): 56–86; Holger Albrecht and Oliver Schlumberger, “‘Waiting for Godot’: ­Regime Change without Democratization in the Middle East,” International Political Science R ­ eview 25 (2004): 371–392; Eva Bellin, “Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Lessons from the Arab Spring,” Comparative Politics 44 (2012): 127–149; Morten Valbjørn, “Upgrading Post-democratization Studies: Examining a Re-politicized Arab World in a Transition to Somewhere,” Mediterranean Politics 21 (2012): 25–35. 52 Norton, “Introduction;” Ibrahim, “Civil Society.” 53 Ellen Lust, “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East,” Journal of Democracy 20 (July, 2009): 122–135; Lisa Blaydes, Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Introduction

17

perception they have labelled “democrazy.”54 The advantage of citizenship studies is that it accepts a much broader scope of analysis, ­looking at a host of concepts and notions of citizenship while not pre-­supposing that they will lead to d­ emocracy. Fourthly, citizenship studies can accommodate social movement theory because it acknowledges agency and takes into account forms of self-awareness, conscious attempts to formulate state-society relations, and notions of social justice, all of which are directly related to central aspects of citizenship in the mena region. It is particularly the main forms of contentions – m ­ aking claims and demanding rights – that dovetail with citizenship studies.55 By recognising n ­ on-organised networks and what Bayat calls “non-movements,”56 citizenship studies goes deeper and recognises that marginalised “non-citizens” can become citizens by acts of self-assertion, such as organising their own services, demonstrating social responsibility, and mobilisation on the local communal level, or what Engin Isin has called “acts of citizenship.”57 Not always directly related to the state, or rights, these initiatives do eventually affect notions of citizenship and the “common good” or the “general interest,” although they are, perhaps, never consciously formulated as such, and are often not the same as they are in the West. Fifth, as citizenship studies has a special perception of citizen-state relations it also can prove to be a fruitful way in which to analyse the authoritarian bargain and its “unravelling,”58 which has played such a crucial role in recent debates on political developments in the region. Sixth, as ­citizenship studies addresses the historical, political, anthropological, ­sociological, and ideological dimensions of citizenship regimes it also brings together these disciplines that have made their mark in Middle East studies, as well as other disciplines such as political philosophy, which is almost non-­existent within the spectrum of area studies. Finally, citizenship studies allows for broad comparisons with the rest of the

54

Morten Valbjørn and André Bank, “Examining the ‘post’ in Post-democratization – The  ­future of Middle Eastern political rule through lenses of the past,” Middle East C ­ ritique 19 (2010): 183–200. 55 B. Hafiz, “New Social Movements and the Egyptian Spring: A Comparative Analysis ­between the April 6 Movement and the Revolutionary Socialists,” Perspectives on Global Development & Technology 12 (2013): 98–113. 56 Bayat, Life as Politics. 57 Engin Isin and Greg M. Nielsen, “Introduction: Acts of Citizenship,” in Acts of Citizenship, ed. Engin Isin and Greg M. Nielsen (London: Zed Books, 2008), 1–11; and Engin Isin, “Theorizing Acts of Citizenship,” in Acts of Citizenship, 15–43. 58 Mehran Kamrava (ed.), Beyond the Arab Spring: The Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East (London: Hurst, 2014).

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world and t­ herefore acts as a corrective on the narrow focus of area studies. Not only does it e­ ncourage ­comparisons with Europe and North America, it also, increasingly, makes ­comparisons with the Global South.59 To summarise, the general purpose of introducing the citizenship approach to studies of the current as well as long-term crisis in the mena region is not to invalidate all existing explanatory models, but to demonstrate how the citizenship approach improves and adds necessary insights into the complexities of the political dynamics of the region. Content of the Book This volume builds on existing works on the Middle East and North ­Africa that have focused on citizenship. There have been works on the colonial period,60 diaspora studies,61 constitutions,62 the Muslim Brotherhood,63

59

See for instance, Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Niraja ­Gopal Jayal, Citizenship and its Discontents: An Indian History (Cambridge ma: Harvard ­University Press, 2013), Henk Schulte Nordholt and Ward Berenschot (eds), Citizenship and ­Democratisation in Southeast Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2016), and James Holston, Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton ­University Press, 2008). 60 Works on the colonial period in particular have a strong citizenship angle. Surprisingly, the historical line between the colonial period and post-independence concerning ­citizenship has never been systematically pursued. See Chapter 2 of this volume for an attempt. For the colonial history, see Benjamin Thomas White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh: ­Edinburgh University Press, 2011); Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Mary Dewhurst Lewis, Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881–1938 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014). 61 For instance, Joel Beinin, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2005). 62 Abdulhadi Khalaf and Giacomo Luciani (eds), Constitutional Reform and Political Participation in the Gulf (Dubai: Gulf Research Center, 2006); Nathan J. Brown, Constitutions in a Nonconstitutional World: Arab Basic Laws and the Prospects for Accountable Government (New York: suny Press, 2002). 63 Scott, The Challenge of Political Islam; Chris Harnisch and Quinn Mecham, “Democratic Ideology in Islamist Opposition? The Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘Civil State’,” Middle Eastern Studies 45 (2009): 189–205; Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, “Strategy and Learning in the Formation of Egypt’s Wasat Party,” Comparative Politics 36 (2004): 205–228.

Introduction

19

I­slam and citizenship,64 Arab political thought,65 migration,66 the position of Palestinians,67 gender and citizenship,68 general theory of citizenship,69 ­minority rights and citizenship,70 women and civic and economic rights,71 and notions of “everyday citizenship.”72 Aside from these works that directly ­address the issue of citizenship, there exist many other publications that ­address the same topic in an indirect way or that can easily be reinterpreted by citizenship studies to make them useful for studies on citizenship. These include, for example, studies on Islamic law, political Islam, personal status law, state formation, or, more specifically, on social pacts and what has been called the “authoritarian bargain.” The purpose of this volume is to try to connect these studies and provide a broader framework to study citizenship in the Arab world. The same applies to the Arab Uprisings. No systematic attempt has been made to compare citizenship conditions in the different countries and to relate the outcomes of the Uprisings, despite the fact that many scholars have pointed out the centrality of citizenship. 64 March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship. 65 Michaelle L. Brower, Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 66 Laurie A. Brand, Citizens Abroad: Emigration and the State in the Middle East and North Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Peter Seeberg and Zaid Eyadat (eds), Migration, Security, and Citizenship in the Middle East (New York: Palgrave ­MacMillan, 2013). 67 Davis, Citizenship and the State. 68 Joseph, Gender and Citizenship; Moghadam, Modernizing Women. 69 Butenschøn et al., (eds), Citizenship and the State in the Middle East. 70 The issue of minorities has particularly attracted the citizenship approach: see, for instance, Mariz Tadros, Copts at the Crossroads:The Challenges of Building Inclusive ­Democracy in Egypt (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2013); Bruce Maddy ­Weizman, “Ethno-politics and Globalisation in North Africa: The Berber Culture Movement,” Journal of North Africa 11 (2006): 71–84; Will Kymlicka and Eva Pföstl (eds), Multiculturalism and Minority Rights in the Arab World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Anh Nga Longva and Anne Sofie Roald, Religious Minorities in the Middle East: Domination, Self-Empowerment, Accommodation (Leiden: Brill, 2012); and Roel Meijer and Joas Wagemaker, “The Struggle for Citizenship of the Shiites in Saudi Arabia,” in The Dynamics of Sunni-Shia Relationships: Doctrine, Transnationalism, Intellectuals and the Media, ed. Sami Zemni and Brigitte Maréchal (London-New York: Hurst/Columbia University Press, 2013), 119–140. 71 Rania Maktabi, The Politicization of the Demos in the Middle East: Citizenship between Membership and Participation in the State (PhD diss., University of Oslo, 2012). 72 Salwa Ismail, “Authoritarian Government, Neoliberalism and Everyday Civilities in Egypt,” Third World Quarterly 32 (2011): 845–862.

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Part 1 of this volume focuses on the different ways extent, content, and depth have been combined in several Arab countries during the Arab Uprisings, depending on external influences, state formation, social formations, and ethnic and religious fissures. Insofar they traces the historical development of the practice and concept of citizenship they show how convoluted and diverse were the trajectories of citizenship in countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Citizenship regimes were often imposed by foreign ­countries, blocked by sub-national or supra-national loyalties, subverted by sectarian and class interests, or manipulated by authoritarian regimes “from above,” r­ esulting in ­unstable state-citizen relations, with the rights of citizens r­ emaining ­undefined and conditional. Historically, several phases can be discerned in the emergence, control and suppression, and re-emergence of notions of citizenship. The chapters show that the Arab Uprisings have been crucial in the ­formation of new definitions of extent, content, and depth of citizenship. In Chapter 1, Anthony Gorman analyses the mixed British legacy. On the one hand, the British interference in the region made an important contribution to citizenship in the region by supporting democratic procedures laid down in constitutions, the establishment of political parties, recognition of trade unions, and the introduction of the rule of law. On the other hand, its support for reform was undermined by its imperial economic and political interests that led it to seek local intermediaries who could guarantee stability. It is especially on the level of extent and formal citizenship and the drawing up of boundaries that exclusionary politics had long-term adversarial effects. The recognition of minorities in Iraq, Palestine, and Trans-Jordan did not always work out well and often actually deepened existing communal divisions, thereby blocking a “genuine civil spirit” of shared citizenship. The British contribution to extent, content and depth remained limited, as voting rights were restricted and constitutions skewed to the advantage of the ruler and the executive. In Chapter 2, Roel Meijer analyses the long-term development of citizenship regimes from the colonial period to the present crisis and the sequence of social contracts, each of them falling apart when its specific citizenship regime was undermined. In this way the colonial regime was supplanted by the citizenship regime of the “authoritarian bargain,” which broke down with the introduction of neoliberalism and the demand for a new social contract based on civil, political, social and economic rights based on new concepts of ­citizenship among different interest groups in society. Meijer argues that the re-­emergence of notions of citizenship based on rights is characteristic of the Arab Uprisings. Where uprisings could sweep away the previous regime and establish a ­consensus on a common concept of the citizen, such as Tunisia, a new citizenship regime was established. Where they were incapable of doing

Introduction

21

so and a pact had been made, such as Morocco in 1992, or a separate deal was made with certain sections of the opposition and the previous regime, such as between the Muslim Brotherhood and military in Egypt, or no deal at all was made, the regime ­remained intact, or collapsed. In all cases, extent, content, and depth were heavily affected. In Chapter 3, Raymond Hinnebusch and Ola Rifai analyse the difficulties Syria encountered in the transition from being part of an empire to becoming a nation-state after World War i. They contend that citizenship is based on the dual processes of state formation and nation building and that this was difficult in Syria because of the artificial boundaries drawn up by the European imperial powers and the ethnic and religious diversity of the population. C ­ itizenship presupposes state centralisation and mass political participation, but this was hampered on the one hand by supra-national ideologies such as pan-Syrianism, pan-Arabism, and pan-Islam, and on the other hand by ­sub-national identities, such as millets, city affiliations, and regional attachments. Moreover, Syria suffered from deep class divisions and strong sectarian loyalties. In its early stages, Baʿathism was able to overcome these obstacles and create a “populist social contract” based on reform, social equality, sectarian inclusion, and the emergence of a distributive state. Gradually, however, it b­ ecame a patrimonial state dependent upon patronage, co-optation, and vertical relations of dependency. With the introduction of neoliberal economic measures in the 1990s, and especially after the death of Hafiz al-Asad in 2000, the coalition of forces began to fall apart, leading to the rise of crony capitalism, growing inequality, widespread regional poverty, and the deepening of ­sectarian fissures. The ­second part of the chapter deals with the call for “­inclusive citizenship” during the Damascus spring in 2001, the Damascus Declaration of 2005, and, particularly, the uprisings in 2011, which first centred around ­notions of equal citizenship and a cross-sectarian civic identity, and was aimed at promoting new citizen-state relations, regardless of sectarian background.73 Yet Syria degenerated into a sectarian war that has merely served to deepen the primordial allegiances, precluding attempts to find a new consensus on extent, content, and depth of citizenship. In Chapter 4, Sami Zemni analyses the relationship between citizenship and the Tunisian revolution through the emergence of the concept of “the people.” As in the case of Syria, a general feeling that the regime had broken the “unwritten contract” between ruler and ruled by being captured by a “gang of thieves” who ran the state for itself was widespread. It was the collapse 73

See also Salwa Ismail, “The Syrian Uprising: Imagining and Performing the Nation,” S­ tudies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11 (2011): 538–549.

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of the right to social mobility and social and economic advancement through education that particularly enraged the population. Previous social rights had been transformed into “favours” dependent on personal loyalty and dependency, while the arbitrariness of the regime insulted the people’s sense of dignity. Zemni’s main argument is that after the revolution the nation was, for the first time, confronted with its divisions along class and identity lines and that it had to define a new national consensus based on a new definition of citizenship in order to redraw the meaning of the principles of extent, ­content, and depth. However, the newly found concept of “the people” did not suffice and a new consensus had to be reached. Tunisianité became the lynchpin of the new social contract, laid down in the new constitution. It was based on the acceptance of pluralism and the resolution of differences through debate, and recognised civil and political rights as well as gender equality, although it ­excluded the Salafis from being part of the new consensus and restricted political participation to voting in elections, thus limiting the inclusionary character of the revolution and the notion that the people as a whole could determine the extent, content, and depth of citizenship. In Chapter 5, James Sater focuses on those elements that impeded the emergence of citizenship and limited the effects of the demonstrations of the February 20 Movement, the movement that emerged in Morocco during the  Arab Uprisings in 2011. Adopting Springborg’s concept of instrumental clientelism (Chapter 15), he shows how pervasive the patronage system of the monarchy is and how it dominates the Moroccan polity and civil society, and how ­co-optation into the makhzen effectively impedes and absorbs the possibilities of contestation and formal political opposition, thus making it difficult to mobilise crucial sections of society on the basis of a rights discourse. In a manner detailed in resilience theories, the king controls extent, content, and depth of citizenship by hollowing it out and absorbing its potential threats. Sater builds on Springborg’s analysis by pointing out that de-politicisation is an important aspect of patronage; the notion of Morocco as one big family with the citizens as the monarch’s children, whose relations with the king, based on “punishment” and “clemency,” does little to enhance independence, self-awareness, and the rights central to citizenship. In Chapter 6, Morten Valbjørn argues that, theoretically, citizenship has the advantage that it is both universal and specific, and therefore goes beyond the dominant authoritarian-democratisation paradigm. He compares the general outline of citizenship as it has been developed by Nils Butenschøn and Roel Meijer in republics with that in the monarchy in Jordan, arguing that it is ­comparable but not the same. The fact that Jordan was created by European powers and did not emerge out of a nationalist movement, and that King

Introduction

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­Abdallah had wider regional ambitions, hampered the development of citizenship in the form of rights and common identity. As in Syria, sub-national loyalties to tribes, sects, and often foreign advisors and administrators created a weak level of national identity. However, in the 1950s Jordan started to see developments similar to the general trends of the region. Indirectly benefiting from oil rents in the Gulf, it was able to compensate for the repression of political parties and political rights with the expansion of the public sector, offering social rights, and becoming a “monarchical version of the authoritarian bargain.” As in other countries in the region, this came to an end with the austerity measures of the 1980s, when a brief period of liberalisation occurred, followed by two decades of what Valbjørn has called a “transition to nowhere.” He acknowledges that the Arab Uprisings were about rights, but they were also very diverse, and often conflicting and contradictory, reflecting different interests. The demand for political rights therefore remained weak in comparison to other countries, and consequently the monarchy could continue its game of divide-and-rule. Jordan’s continuing difficulty in determining its boundaries and the status of its inhabitants, including what civil, political, and social rights they should have, was compounded by the Palestinian issue, which ­impeded the establishment of an inclusionary state, equal citizenship, and broad political participation. In Chapter 7, Ida Almestad and Stig Stenslie analyse one of the main problems of state-citizen relations in the region, which is especially marked in oil-rentier states such as Saudi Arabia where the authoritarian bargain has ­acquired a specific conservative Islamic and paternalistic flavour. Citizen rights are laid down in the Basic Law, Saudi Arabia’s constitution, where, in exchange for a pledge of allegiance to the ruler, the citizen is entitled to health care, job security, unemployment fees, and pension funds. These are, however, not rights, in the sense of abstract citizen rights, but are beneficences, “gifts” (makrama), given at the discretion of the ruler and dependent on personal loyalty to him; they can, therefore, be withdrawn at his whim. Furthermore, the country upholds a “graded or differential citizenship” of privileges in a ­hierarchy that has the ruling family and tribal aristocracy at the top, and women and minorities at the bottom. Extent, content, and depth are determined by a mix of tribal, monarchical, and conservative Islamic notions of loyalty. It is against this rampant inequality that increasing resistance has arisen among the population, and particularly the Shiʿi part of it, which has been formulated in the rights discourse of citizenship. That the demand for equal civil and political rights is not limited to liberals, Shiʿis and women, but also includes Salafis, signifies a revolution in Saudi political thought and the emergence of new pressures “from below.”

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In Chapter 8, James Sater analyses how the high percentage of migrants in the Gulf states has led to a differential citizenship regime that not only ­affects relations between full citizens and non-citizens, but also the relationship ­between full members of the community. The Gulf states experience a “­citizenship hierarchy” between citizens themselves, based on tribal, familial, ­economic, sectarian, and gender bases, as well as between citizens and the migrant expat community, based on work permits, rights of abode, investment opportunities, and so on. The state benefits the most from this citizenship regime because on the one hand it initiates plans that need migrants and drive up the numbers of expats, while on the other it forces full citizens to seek support from the state in order to protect their culture and wealth against the migrants who form the overwhelming majority of the population in most Gulf states. In this monopolistic situation the state determines the extent, content, and depth of citizenship for its own citizens as well as the status of migrants. ­Citizens wage a rear-guard battle for cultural authenticity and extent – closure of citizenship rights, or what Sater calls the “hardening of the core” – seldom demanding political rights. This is the case in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar, but this is seen to a lesser extent in Kuwait, which has less migrants and a more powerful local merchant community that has political rights, and Saudi Arabia, which has a larger local population. In all cases, naturalisation is almost impossible and mixed marriages are discouraged as they jeopardise full citizenship rights. In Chapter 9, Nils Butenschøn discusses different explanations for the lack of regime legitimacy, democratic reform and the exceptional resilience of authoritarian regimes in the region. While recognising the importance of many such contributions from the 1960’s onwards, focusing as most of them do relevant to the citizenship approach, he suggests that an analysis of the strategic environment of ruling elites and their opponents should be added to enhance our understanding of obstacles to dynamic changes in the political order. Given the peculiar patterns of power politics in the mena region we need an approach that includes analyses of the interaction between actors on the local, regional, and international levels. The challenge is that we are confronted with an extremely complex strategic environment: The combination of regimes that generally speaking are characterised by a weak level of legitimacy and a contested power-base, on the one hand, and being located in a ­politically polarised region subjected to exceptionally intense geopolitical rivalries, on the other. The main argument is that the combination of these ­factors ­creates political dynamics that work against citizenship-based policies and societal trust. At best, ­reforms from above are introduced securing stability for a while, but not the kind of stability that opens up the political system for its citizens.

Introduction

25

The ­picture that emerges is a complex multi-level pattern of interdependencies. Thus an “iron triangle” of counterforces on local, regional, and global levels will, if ­necessary, be mobilised to protect the status quo. Part 2 focuses on the concepts of citizenship. The first chapter deals with the ideational notions and legal aspects of citizenship, especially in Islam. The chapters make clear that the notions of citizenship and concept of rights have always existed in Islam, but it is also clear that these have expanded over the past years. As the Muslim Brotherhood became integrated into the ­political process but at the same time became object of repression the concepts of rights were rethought and strengthened and the notion of rights associated with citizenship (muwatana) more thoroughly anchored in the overall ideology of the movement, demonstrating that Islamism is quite flexible. The same also is the case with Salafism. There as well, the Arab Uprisings have forced quietist Salafi movements, not just in Egypt but from Morocco to Yemen, to a­ ccept politics and therefore to rethink the position believers within the ­political context of the constitutions of the nation-state and the parliamentary ­system, as citizens with rights and obligations. From the changes in the constitutions, however, we can observe that these rights have a communal rather than an individual dimension and that the rights versus the state are weak, a tendency that is supported by secular ideologies and is only more recently being challenged by new libertarian trends in Arab political thinking. These chapters make clear the state’s ability to determine the extent, content, and depth of citizenship has been challenged by Islamic and secular movements. The results, however, have been deeply ambiguous. In Chapter 10 Knut Vikør argues that as far as content is concerned Islamic law protects the subject from arbitrary rule and instead gives a normative set of rules and admonitions that the ruler has to abide by if he wants to gain legitimacy. These belonged to the “rights of God” (interpreted as the “rights of society”), the “general good” (masalih), and the five “necessities” (­maqasid). According to Vikør, the ruler could not easily overstep the limits of these rights, which protected the believers’ religion, life, intellect, lineage and property, religion, and society. On the whole, it seems that the ruler accepted the restrictions laid down in Islamic rule (al-siyasa al-sharʿiyya), which allowed for a considerable degree of freedom while demanding his rule would comply with the “spirit of the sharia.” The need for the sovereign to legitimate his rule in Islamic terms sets limits to arbitrariness. State courts, too, could not easily contravene Islamic law. Other practices, such as hisba, also seem to have worked to the benefit of the common good and upheld a “balance” in society. Extent in Islamic law was determined by gender, freedom (slave/free), and religion (Muslim/non-Muslim), and was not based on equality, but on the

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whole it did have rules and regulations that were predictable and can therefore be called the rule of law. The notion of “fairness” also guarded against arbitrariness. In Chapter 11, Michaelle Browers analyses the ideological history of citizenship from Rifaʿa Rifaʿi al-Tahtawi in the early nineteenth century through to the Arab Uprisings of 2011. She shows how concepts and notions of citizenship and the projected relations between citizens and the state have constantly adapted themselves to specific Arab ideologies, being integrated into Islamic law by al-Tahtawi, adapted by Arab nationalist thinkers during the second half of the twentieth century to Arab authoritarianism – constituting the basis of the authoritarian bargain under Nasser – to recent the Arab Uprisings in 2011. Unsurprisingly, in the 1950s and 1960s, whether formulated by secular nationalists or Islamists, social and economic rights were stressed at the expense of political rights and pluralism, which were often seen as divisive and Western. Social justice, often seen as a moral, distinct element of Islamic civilisation, was regarded as the touchstone of citizenship. Intellectual musings on citizenship also reflected the failure of the building of the nation-state and the common interest, which, after the 1967 defeat, immediately fell under the “spontaneous sway of the tribal,” in the words of Sadiq al-ʿAzm. The increased interest in Islam, citizenship, and equal rights of non-Muslims, was expressed by the Wasatiyya group in the 1980s. The innovation of the Uprisings is marked by the adoption, for the first time, of “the people” and people’s sovereignty, as expressed in the graffiti on a wall in Cairo, “We are the leaders we have been waiting for.” Self-assertion, sit-ins and claim-making themselves became means of expressing solidarity and citizenship. In Chapter 12, Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen analyses the concept of citizenship in the Muslim Brotherhood and affiliated ʿulama, such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and the Wasatiyya intellectuals Tariq al-Bishri and Salim al-ʿAwwa, among ­others. He demonstrates that citizenship as a concept did not really figure in the Brotherhood’s discourse until the movement became tenuously integrated into the political system after the 1970s and had to rethink the relationship between subject and state and address the issues of extent, content, and depth seriously for the first time. A whole range of concepts on the political level were introduced to underscore new political rights of the citizen including the introduction of the “civil state” (as opposed to the Islamic state), the a­ cceptance of the originally secular term “citizen” (muwatin), the notion of political equality between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the downgrading in the political field of terms such as “unbelievers” (kuffar). This change in thinking was reflected in the political platforms and programmes of the Muslim Brotherhood from the 1990s onward, which also became more critical of the power of the executive,

Introduction

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enhancing the political rights of citizens. They found their way into the Justice and Freedom Party established after the fall of Mubarak, whose charter states the “The State is based on the principle of citizenship, where all citizens enjoy equal rights and duties guaranteed by law in accordance with the principles of equality and equal opportunities without discrimination ­because of religion or race.” The acceptance of the sovereignty of the people also meant a shift in asserting citizenship. Its stand on content, mostly formulated in conservative moralistic terms, however, stressed its communalistic dimension based on “family values” and “public morality,” which directly affect depth. Moreover, as Skovgaard-Petersen argues, reform is mostly based on “justice,” not “­freedom,” and privileges the state, in a sense, presenting an “Islamic-lite” authoritarian bargain. A new generation will have to emerge to further develop citizenship as a concept. In Chapter 13, Emin Poljarevic analyses the Salafis’ notions of citizenship. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been influenced by external concepts, as Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen demonstrated, Salafism is broadly based on the “purity” of Islam and orthopraxy, and thinks in terms of friends and ­enemies and has developed means by which to keep a distance from all sources of “­pollution.” It is based on exclusion and maintaining sharp borders with the “other,” who represents the “evil” and “corrupt” out-group, while limiting inclusion to their own religious community, most succinctly expressed in the principle of al-walaʾ wa-l-baraʾ (loyalty to Muslims and disavowal of nonSalafis). Nevertheless, there are important differences between various Salafi groups, primarily with regard to their mobilising strategies. Citizenship in these pre-modern and even pre-political terms can only mean membership of the umma, and that the hadith and Qurʾan in all their transparency determine extent, content, and depth. Citizenship in the Salafi sense is based on duties, rather than rights. One becomes member of the “saved sect” by fulfilling one’s duties and obligations. This apolitical attitude, however, became difficult to maintain once the Arab uprisings forced Salafis to become involved in politics. Several notions helped them to make this step, such as the flexible notions of “necessity” and the “general interest,” and to adopt stances that have compromised their highly exclusionary notions of citizenship. In Egypt, this meant taking part in elections under “alien” constitutions that recognise the equal rights of citizens. That Salafism is clearly influenced by political circumstances is further underlined in Saudi Arabia, where the duty of “obedience” (taʿa) to the ruler (wali al-amr) is central to the religious sanctioning of the authoritarian bargain based on royal benevolence (makrama), or in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (isis), where, due in part to the escalation of sectarian animosity, the most rigid communal, exclusionary, and discriminatory form of S­ alafism

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is u ­ pheld as an alternative to the failed attempts to construct nationalist, panArab, or even briefly in 2011 liberal citizenship regimes in Syria. In Chapter 14 Rachel Scott analyses the citizenship regime that resulted from the uprisings in Egypt, as laid down in the constitution of 2014. In contrast to earlier chapters on citizenship and activism, or performance, she focuses on the disciplining power of the state that crushes these movements from above. She traces tensions in the conceptualisations of citizenship to the history of dhimmi status, and the millet, which coincided with the nation and were based on communal self-rule and the expansion of the power of the secular state from the nineteenth century onwards, which encroached on the millet and finally took over the nation, restricting the religious law to the p ­ ersonal status law. In this way, the determination of extent, content, and depth, which were partly determined by the millet, were gradually transferred to the state. Rather than assuming a dichotomy between the so-called secular liberal and the authoritarian and the more Islamist periods, Scott argues there has been a ­continuous, state-managed citizen regime in Egypt since the nineteenth ­century, in which the state increasingly came to define religious categories and the relation b­ etween religion and politics, laid down the boundaries between majority and minority, and determined the nation’s accepted religions and ­national culture. The ability of the state to determine extent, content, and depth is reflected in its claim to uphold the “public order” and ­regulate what is and is not acceptable, and who can be excluded and persecuted. This is especially manifest in Art. 3 of the constitution of 2014 that recognises “heavenly religions,” that is, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, but excludes other r­ eligions, such as the Bahaʾi faith. The notion of the public order has also been taken up by intellectuals who invoke it to restrict civil rights in the public sphere. It has also been supported by the Coptic church, whose power over its followers as their representative is based on the recognition of the state, and as such goes directly against the demands for equal citizenship rights that a number of Coptic youth movements demanded during the uprisings. Part 3 deals with the practices and specific claims to citizenship. The first chapter deals with the main practices in the Middle East that obstruct, hamper and undermine claims to objective and abstract rights: patronage and ­clientelism. These have appeared throughout the book and in many ways the emergence of a discourse of rights and equality over the past decades leading to the Arab Uprisings is a revolt against the vertical relations of dependence and submission. Most of this part is therefore taken up by research of the discriminated, marginalised, the socially, ethnically, and religiously excluded, youth, and women, and how they formulate claims to dignity and organise contentious actions. This struggle is fought on the ideological level and the

Introduction

29

performative level. The emphasis is on expressions, actions, symbolism, performances, signs of solidarity, claim making, and enactments. The chapters focus on the Arab Uprisings of 2011, but also include other, earlier citizenship manifestations. For a brief period, these manifestations claimed the exclusive right to determine the extent, content, and depth of citizenship, encompassing an unbounded inclusivity, an undefined consensual content, and a limitless depth and commitment to the general good. As such, they exceed the reformist aspect of the Arab Uprisings.74 It would, however, be a mistake to overlook the legal dimension. At some point action has to be translated into formal political measures, i.e. laws and constitutions. Neither would it be wise to ignore the regressive side of the Uprisings, as the last two contributions describe. In Chapter 15 Robert Springborg argues that clientelism is the primary ­obstacle to the introduction of a democratic polity based on equal citizenship. He makes a distinction between “dense clientelism,” which is culturally embedded and emotionally loaded, and “instrumental clientalism,” which is a modern means to build political alliances and divide resources. However, even in the latter both culture and “path dependence” play a major role and the difference with dense clientalism is less obvious than is often assumed. Research confirms that the strong sense of hierarchy and the predominance of authority over autonomy in Muslim countries point to persistent cultural roots and “survival strategies” that preclude self-expression and self-decision making. The prevalence of linguistic, ethnic, and religious cleavages in the Middle East have enhanced these tendencies. In the end, clientalism hampers the spread of a rational-legal, programmatic, and democratic culture and has severe a­ dverse economic and political effects, enhancing dependence, inequality, and underdevelopment. Patronage, rather than citizenship, provides the “glue” that holds polities together and determines the extent, content, and depth by building vertical, exclusive, segmented loyalties that undermine horizontal, broad, ­inclusionary entities built on a sense of individual rights. In Chapter 16, Rania Maktabi takes us to the other spectrum of Kuwait politics, i.e. the exclusion of Kuwaiti women from full civic rights, mainly because male kin have guardianship over female family members. She analyses the impact of the enfranchisement of women in 2005 on the articulation and raising of women-specific issues in parliament, such as strengthening Kuwaiti women’s autonomy in obtaining a passport; improving their chances on the labour market; increasing their access to public housing; and s­ trengthening

74

See Asef Bayat, who stressed the reformist and the non-revolutionary character of the uprisings.

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the civil and social rights of the children of Kuwaiti women married to noncitizens, ­including stateless bidun men. While the demonstrations of the Arab Uprisings were spectacular events, incremental and piecemeal formal improvements in the civil and economic rights of Kuwaiti women reflect the changing content and depth of gendered citizenship in an authoritarian Gulf state with limited albeit deliberative parliamentary processes. Claims raised by both male and f­ emale MPs for strengthening Kuwaiti women’s citizenship rights reflected pressures for bolstered female citizenship. At the same time, the reformist dimension of the Arab Uprisings had a gendered face that deepened internal social divisions in Kuwait. Increased focus on female citizenship in parliament, in court, and in the media shored up the privileged status and position of Kuwaiti women as holders of Kuwaiti citizenship documents in contradistinction to segments of the bidun population with no affiliation to Kuwaiti women. In Chapter 17, Assia Boutaleb, continues this approach and explains the role of youth in the Uprisings but employs the anthropological perspective of the practice rather than the ideational. She argues that youth was not the only social group protesting in 2011, but that it expressed a general critique of society and “was the best in analysing and explaining the political game.” But perhaps more importantly than content and extent of citizenship was the dimension of depth as it was expressed in practice. The two groups she analyses in Egypt and Morocco show an extraordinary degree of commitment and sense of social responsibility. In both cases they engaged in explaining their rights to citizens, for instance by explaining the workings of the electoral system, the importance of the new constitutions, and providing information on the economic or international situation. Rather than imposing ideas from above, they organised debates, dialogues, and public training. In this way they disseminated a sense of civic engagement and active citizenship, in the sense of citizens sharing joint responsibility for their future. These “acts of citizenship” are not heroic transgressions of the political order or radical disruptions of civic norms but, as Boutaleb states, “[T]hey are minor, everyday acts, such as discussing or arguing issues of public interest, but through them a civic ­relationship is produced between ordinary citizens.” Their main purpose is to break down the predominant sense of apathy and culture of subordination. In ­addition, in contrast to the classic ruling bargain, these acts of citizenship were expressed in terms of a suspicion of the state, which was no longer seen as the source of rights and a provider of services. In response, the state has waged a propaganda campaign to exclude the youth by linking it with drugs, ­criminality, and the disruption of the public order.

Introduction

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In Chapter 18, Claire Beaugrand analyses the position of the people without rights in Kuwait, the bidun, and how they “by virtue of their acts, c­ onstitute themselves as legal and political subjects.” The bidun have, over the years, ­become the quintessential victims of what Sater calls the “hardening of the core” of citizenship in the Gulf. Victims of a bureaucratic mistake in the 1960s, they were excluded from the welfare provisions citizens obtained and from having any rights at all, and increasingly were regarded as total outsiders, aliens, who posed a security, cultural, and economic threat, and consequently are not recognised as beings. As such, the bidun are a good example of the politics of citizenship of the state. Their status as “non-existent” beings was underlined in the marginal spaces they inhabited. Although the bidun case goes back several decades, as was typical of the Arab Uprisings they no longer relied on patronage but developed innovative forms for promoting their case. The protests in 2011 were led by a new generation of young leaders who were not members of civil society and were independent. Their protests were spontaneous, innovative, and public, and adopted new forms, such as organising public demonstrations or days of commemoration, handing out flowers to parliamentarians, and outright defiance of the authorities, forcing the latter to take the case of the bidun into account. Regardless of the outcome, through these acts of citizenship the bidun managed to assert their right to have rights. In the Chapter 19 and the conclusion of the book, Engin Isin gives an ­exposé what citizenship studies can contribute to the study of the Middle East. He points to new developments in citizenship studies such as the sexual and ­environmental rights. Moreover it is clear that in a globalised world citizenship is no longer confined to nation-states. Isin also argues against the trope that subjects are turned into citizens. Instead citizens are both: they are s­ ubjects and citizens, subject to power, control, and discipline, reduced to obedience and submission on the one hand and empowered to contest those forces and change them through contestation and subversion on the other. Following Etiènne Balibar, Isin accepts the dual nature of the modern citizen-subject who is a “subject to power” and a “subject of power.” In the first the state works on the citizen, who is legislated and acted upon, while in the second the citizen contests this power, alters it, and acquires agency. In the words of Isin: “What distinguishes the citizen from the subject is that the citizen is this composite subject of obedience, submission, and subversion.” Citizenship is confirmed in performances, rituals and acts. Citizenship in this universal form is shorn of its European bias. In terms of extent, content, depth, this raises important questions which Isin does not explore but can be asked on the basis of this volume. These are: How does the subject-citizen work out in the Middle East from the

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colonial period to the present? How does it apply to Islamist movements, or other social movements or transnational movements in the region, and how has the authoritarian state determined the citizen-subject in the region, and how has it since the Arab Uprisings tried to put the citizen jinn back in the subject box? The questions that Isin throws up underline the complexities of applying insights of citizenship studies to the Middle East. Bibliography Abdelrahman, Maha. Egypt’s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings. New York: Routledge, 2015. Abu Lughod, Lila. “Living the ‘Revolution’ in an Egyptian Village: Moral Action in a National Space.” American Ethnologist 29 (2012): 21–25. Albrecht, Holger, and Oliver Schlumberger. “‘Waiting for Godot’: Regime Change without Democratization in the Middle East.” International Political Science Review 25 (2004): 371–392. Alexander, Anne, and Mostafa Bassiouny. Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers and the Egyptian Revolution. London: Zed Press, 2014. Al-Rasheed, Madawi. Muted Modernists: The Struggle over Divine Politics in Saudi Arabia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Barkey, Karen. Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambrdige University Press, 2008. Bayat, Asef. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Beinin, Joel. The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2005. Beinin, Joel. Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016. Beinin, Joel, and Frédéric Vairel (eds). Social Movements, Mobilization and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. Bellamy, Richard, and Antonino Palumbo (eds). Citizenship. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Bellin, Eva. “Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Lessons from the Arab Spring.” Comparative Politics 44 (2012): 127–149. Blaydes, Lisa. Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt. Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 2009. Brower, Michaelle L. Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Brumberg, Daniel. “Democratization in the Arab World? The Trap of Liberalized ­Autocracy.” Journal of Democracy 13 (2002): 56–86.

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Bogaert, Koenraad. “The Revolt of Small Towns: The Meaning of Morocco’s History and Geography of Social Protest.” Review of African Political Economy 42 (2015): 124–140. Brown, Nathan J. Constitutions in a Nonconstitutional World: Arab Basic Laws and the Prospects for Accountable Government. New York: SUNY Press, 2002. Brubaker, Rogers. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Brynen, Rex, Peter W. Moore, Bassel F. Salloukh, and Marie-Joëlle Zahar (eds). Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democratization in the Arab World. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2012. Bush, Ray, and Habib Ayeb, Marginality and Exclusion in Egypt. London: Zed Press, 2012. Butenschøn, Nils A. “State, Power, and Citizenship in the Middle East: A Theoretical Introduction.” In Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and A ­ pplications, edited by Nils Butenschøn, Uri Davis, and Manuel Hassassian, 3–27. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Butenschøn, Nils A, Uri Davis, and Manuel Hassassian (eds). Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Butenschøn, Nils A, “Arab Citizen and the Arab State: The ‘Arab Spring’ as a Critical Juncture in Contemporary Arab Politics,” Democracy and Security 11 (2015): 111–128. Camau, Michel, and Frédéric Vairel (eds). Les soulèvements populaires dans le monde arabe. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2014. Cavatorta, Francesco, and Fabio Merone, “Moderation Through Exclusion? The J­ ourney of the Tunisian Ennahda from Fundamentalist to Conservative Party,” Democratization 20 (2013): 857–875. Challand, Benoît. “Citizenship against the Grain: Locating the Spirit of the Arab Uprisings in Times of Counterrevolution.” Constellations 20 (2013): 169–187. Chatterjee, Partha. The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Davis, Uri. Citizenship and the State: A Comparative Study of Citizenship Legislation in Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. London: Ithaca Press, 1999. Duboc, Marie. “Challenging the Trade Union, Reclaiming the Nation: The Politics of Labor Protest in Egypt, 2006–11.” In Beyond the Arab Spring: The Evolving Ruling ­Bargain in the Middle East, edited by Mehram Kamrava, 223–248. London: Hurst, 2014. Fahrmeir, Andreas. Citizenship: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Concept. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Faulks, Keith. Citizenship. Abingdon: Routledge, 2000. Gunning, Jeroen, and Ilan Zvi Baron. Why Occupy a Square? People, Protests and Movements in the Egyptian Revolution. London: Hurst, 2013.

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Hafiz, B. “New Social Movements and the Egyptian Spring: A Comparative Analysis between the April 6 Movement and the Revolutionary Socialists.” Perspectives on Global Development & Technology 12 (2013): 98–113. Halpern, Manfred. “Middle Eastern Armies and the New Middle Classes.” In The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries, edited by John J. Johnson, 277–315. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962. Hanieh, Adam. Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2013. Harders, Cilja. “The Informal Social Pact: The State and the Urban Poor in Cairo.” In Politics from Above, Politics from Below: The Middle East in the Age of Economic ­Reform, edited by Eberhard Kienle, 191–213. London: Saqi Books, 2003. Harnisch, Chris, and Quinn Mecham. “Democratic Ideology in Islamist Opposition? The Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘Civil State’.” Middle Eastern Studies 45 (2009): 189–205. Hatem, Mervat F. “The Arab Spring Meets the Occupy Wall Street Movement: Examples of Changing Definitions of Citizenship in a Global World.” Journal of Civil Society 8 (2012): 401–415. Heydemann, Steven. Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World. Analysis Paper No.   13, The Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, 2007. Hoffmann, Anja, and Christoph König. “Scratching the Democratic Façade: Framing Strategies of the 20 February Movement.” Mediterranean Politics 18 (2013): 1–22. Holston, James. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Hudson, Michael. Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1977. Ibrahim, Saad Eddin. “Civil Society and Prospects for Democratization in the Arab World.” In Civil Society in the Middle East, volume 1, edited by Augustus Richard Norton, 27–54. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995. Isin Engin, F., and Bryan S. Turner (eds). Handbook of Citizenship Studies. London: Sage, 2002. Isin, Engin F., and Greg M. Nielsen (eds). Acts of Citizenship. London: Zed Books, 2008. Ismail, Salwa. “The Syrian Uprising: Imagining and Performing the Nation.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11 (2011): 538–549. Ismail, Salwa. “Authoritarian Government, Neoliberalism and Everyday Civilities in Egypt.” Third World Quarterly 32 (2011): 845–862. Jayal, Niraja Gopal. Citizenship and its Discontents: An Indian History. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Joppke, Christian. Citizenship and Immigration. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010. Joseph, Suad (ed.). Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East. New York: Syracuse ­University Press, 2000.

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Kamrava, Mehran (ed.). Beyond the Arab Spring: The Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East. London: Hurst, 2014. Khalaf, Abdulhadi, and Giacomo Luciani (eds). Constitutional Reform and Political ­Participation in the Gulf. Dubai: Gulf Research Center, 2006. Kivisto, Peter, and Thomas Faist. Citizenship: Discourse, Theory and Transnational Prospects. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Kymlicka, Will, and Eva Pföstl (eds). Multiculturalism and Minority Rights in the Arab World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Kymlicka, Will. Multicultural Citizenship. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Laqueur, Walter Z. (ed.). The Middle East in Transition: Studies in Contemporary History. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958. Lewis, Mary Dewhurst. Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1­ 881–1938. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. Longva, Anh Nga, and Anne Sofie Roald. Religious Minorities in the Middle East: ­Domination, Self-Empowerment, Accommodation. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Lust, Ellen. “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East.” Journal of Democracy 20 (2009): 122–135. Lynch, Marc (ed.). The Arab Uprisings Explained: New Contentious Politics in the Middle East. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. Maktabi, Rania. The Politicization of the Demos in the Middle East: Citizenship between Membership and Participation in the State. PhD diss., University of Oslo, 2012. Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1996. March, Andrew F. Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping C ­ onsensus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Meijer, Roel. “The Problem of the Political in Islamist Movements.” In Whatever ­Happened to the Islamists? Salafis, Heavy Metal Muslims and the Lure of Consumerist Islam, edited by Amel Boubekeur and Olivier Roy, 27–60. London: Hurst, 2012. Meijer, Roel, and Maarten Danckaert. “Bahrein: Dynamics of a Conflict.” In Arab Spring: Negotiating in the Shadow of the Intifadat, edited by William I. Zartman, 209–248. Athens GA: University of Georgia Press, 2015. Meijer, Roel, and Wagemaker Joas. “The Struggle for Citizenship of the Shiites in Saudi Arabia.” In The Dynamics of Sunni-Shia Relationships: Doctrine, Transnationalism, Intellectuals and the Media, edited by Sami Zemni and Brigitte Maréchal, 119–140. London: Hurst, 2013. Moghadam, M. Valentine. Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2013. Monro, Surya, and Diane Richardson. “Citizenship, Gender and Sexuality.” In Handbook of Political Citizenship and Social Movements, edited by Hein Anton van der Heijden, 60–85. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2014.

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Moore, Barrington Jr. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1967. Norton, Augustus Richard. “Introduction.” In Civil Society in the Middle East, volume 1, edited by Augustus Richard Norton, 1–25. Leiden: Brill 1995. Pace, Michelle, and Francesco Cavatorta. “Arab Uprisings in Theoretical Perspective.” Mediterranean Politics 17 (2012): 125–138. Parolin, Gianluca P. Citizenship in the Arab World. Kin, Religion and Nation-State. ­Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009. Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Rabbani, Mouin. “The Year of the Citizen.” In The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of the Old Order?, edited by Bassam Haddad, Rosie Bsheer, and Ziad Abu-Rish, 33–36. London: Pluto Press, 2012. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Salvatore, Armando, and Dale Eickelman (eds), Public Islam and the Common Good. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Sandel, Michael J. Justice: What is the Right Thing to do? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Schulte Nordholt, Henk, and Ward Berenschot (eds). Citizenship and Democratisation in Southeast Asia. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Scott, Rachel. The Challenge of Political Islam: Non-Muslims and the Egyptian State. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Seeberg, Peter, and Zaid Eyadat (eds). Migration, Security, and Citizenship in the Middle East. New York: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2013. Siim, Birte, and Judith Squires (eds). Contesting Citizenship. London: Routledge, 2008. Singerman, Diane. Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Skinner, Quentin, and Bo Stråth (eds). States and Citizens: History, Theory, Prospects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Tadros, Mariz. Copts at the Crossroads: The Challenges of Building Inclusive Democracy in Egypt. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2013. Thompson, Elizabeth. Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Tilly, Charles, and Lesley J. Wood. Social Movements, 1768–2008. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2009. Tripp, Charles. The Power and the people: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Tully, James. On Global Citizenship: James Tully in Dialogue. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Turner, Bryan S. (ed.) Citizenship and Social Theory. London: Sage, 1993.

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Valbjørn, Morten. “Upgrading Post-Democratization Studies: Examining a Repoliticized Arab World in a Transition to Somewhere.” Mediterranean Politics 21 (2012): 25–35. Valbjørn, Morten, and André Bank. “Examining the ‘post’ in Post-Democratization – The Future of Middle Eastern Political Rule through Lenses of the Past.” Middle East Critique 19 (2010): 183–200. Wegner, Eva. Islamist Opposition in Authoritarian Regimes: The Party of Justice and ­Development in Morocco. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2011. Weizman, Bruce Maddy. “Ethno-politics and Globalisation in North Africa: The Berber Culture Movement.” Journal of North Africa 11 (2006): 71–84. Weizman, Bruce Maddy. “Arabization and its Discontents: The Rise of the Amazigh Movement in North Africa.” Journal of the Middle East and Africa 3 (2012): 109–135. White, Benjamin Thomas. The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011. Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky. “Strategy and Learning in the Formation of Egypt’s Wasat Party.” Comparative Politics 36 (2004): 205–228. Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky. “The Muslim Brotherhood and Democratic Transition in Egypt.” Middle East Law and Governance Journal 3 (2011): 204–223. Wiktorowicz, Quintan (ed.). Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Yousfi, Hèla. L’UGTT, une passion tunisienne: Enquête sur les syndicalistes en révolution (2011–2014). Paris: Karthala, 2015. Zeghal, Malika. Islamism in Morocco: Religion, Authoritarianism and Electoral Politics. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2009.

part 1 The Arab Social Pact

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chapter 1

The British Legacy in the Middle East Anthony Gorman From the middle of the nineteenth until the mid-twentieth century, Britain played a significant role in determining the development of political institutions and practices of citizenship in the Middle East that was to leave a substantial legacy thereafter. Articulated in different ways according to the particular needs of the situation, the British imperial project engaged with local regimes and traditions, the requirements of the contemporary international context, and, where necessary, popular demands, in order to lay a foundation of public culture and practice based on conceptions of nationality, citizenship, and democratic institutions as the basis of a body politic, even as it qualified the scope and authority of such institutions. In so doing it sought to establish its own priority of establishing stable states sympathetic to its imperial interests. The result was a mixed legacy that provided a legal framework of citizenship and constitutional rule but limited rights and a basis for authoritarian rule with which to curb opposition that would readily be taken up by local elites. In exploring the evolution of these conceptions and practices of citizenship during this period, this chapter will focus on the cases of Egypt, the mandates of Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan, and the Gulf states of Kuwait and Bahrain. Background From the beginning of the nineteenth century Britain came to exercise an increasingly significant and at times dominant role in Middle Eastern political affairs. While its role in the defeat of the French in Egypt in 1801 announced its presence in the region it did not take up a more specific authority until the second half of the century. With the occupation of Egypt in 1882, which continued in various guises, from the initial so-called veiled protectorate to the formal protectorate of 1914–1922, and on until its withdrawal in 1956, Britain embarked on the first of a number of major imperial commitments. In the mandatory administrations of Iraq (1923–1932), Palestine (1923–1948), and Transjordan (1923–1946), constructed from the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Britain played a more formal role in mentoring these new states under the authority of the League of Nations. In Kuwait, Bahrain, and other Trucial states a series of treaties signed by Britain with local rulers d­ uring © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_003

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the nineteenth century and maintained until its formal withdrawal from the Gulf at the beginning of the 1970s formed the basis of British imperium, guaranteeing its control in matters of defence and foreign affairs in return for supporting the position of the traditional ruling families. These particular political circumstances afforded Britain an environment in which it exercised considerable authority in erecting the constitutional architecture and influencing the culture of citizenship. This was done in different ways. In Egypt the British agent and consul-general exerted considerable ­influence on the workings of government through a network of British advisers, particularly during the time of Lord Cromer (1883–1907). The mandatory administrations in Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq served as a direct ­instrument of British authority but, in the case of Iraq, British influence continued well after formal independence in 1932 through a series of advisors.1 The device of bilateral treaties, in Egypt with the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, in Jordan with the Anglo-Transjordan Treaty (1928), and in Iraq with the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty (1930) and the Portsmouth Treaty (1948), served as the basis through which Britain formalised relations between itself and the respective states and legitimated its interference in domestic affairs.2 During World War ii, Britain invoked its rights under these treaties to reassert control over Egypt and reoccupy Iraq after the rise of a pro-German government in 1941 until the end of the war. The arrangements with the Trucial States provided similar legal sanction. Throughout this period the British government presided over a process of constitutional change in which governing institutions were defined, terms of nationality formulated, and the rights of citizens, whether explicitly or ­implicitly, delineated. In promoting this course the British authorities invoked the virtues of democracy, constitutional government, and an active citizenry. This was particularly the case in the mandatory administrations where Britain was entrusted by the League of Nations with the role of laying the basis of representative institutions, legal and social rights, and the protection of minorities. Despite these claims and commitments, in shaping institutions of governance and a culture of citizenship British policy was not driven primarily by such ideals but was characterised by a pragmatic and flexible approach, 1 Stephen Longrigg, Iraq, 1900 to 1950: A Political, Social, and Economic History (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), 342. 2 The declaration of February 22, 1922, in which Britain granted Egypt self-government though reserved to itself certain important powers, while not mutually agreed, can be similarly characterised.

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largely qualified by concerns about political stability and calculations made to maintain a continuing British presence and ensure its future influence. This was also moderated through competing demands of the local population that involved negotiation with the local elites and an engagement, whether of accommodation or resistance, with popular calls for the recognition of particular political, economic, social, and cultural rights. The results of this political project and the dynamics of the relationship that it established would play a significant part in determining the trajectory of citizenship as a practice in the post-colonial period.

Constitutional Rules

Constitutional reform was a central pillar of British rule in both Egypt and the mandates. In 1883, soon after the occupation of Egypt, a new constitution (organic law) was promulgated that would lay the basis for government and administration for the next 40 years. Following a sustained nationwide protest against its continued presence in 1919–21, the British government unilaterally granted Egypt self-government and authorised the drafting of a new constitution. Written by a committee appointed by the Egyptian government but undoubtedly under some British influence, the 1923 constitution was strongly influenced by European and particularly Belgian constitutional practice.3 It established a constitutional monarchy drawn from the family of Muhammad ʿAli with a bicameral parliament. The king as executive was accorded very considerable powers, including the right to appoint the Prime Minister, dismiss the cabinet and the parliament, and declare martial law. The popular will was represented by the House of Representatives, which was elected by popular vote along with three-fifths of the membership of the Senate, while the king appointed the remainder. In the mandates of Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan the establishment of a system of government and definition of citizenship required deference, in principle at least, to the provisions of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Composed of the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the Class A Mandates (the category that included both British and French mandatory administrations in the Middle East) were states whose independence was provisionally recognised but which were deemed to require a period of tutelage before being granted full status. This period therefore necessitated 3 Abdeslam M. Maghraoui, Liberalism without Democracy: Nationhood and Citizenship in Egypt, 1922–1936 (Durham: Duke University Press 2006), 130.

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deliberation, negotiation, and occasionally insistence on the part of the mandatory power, in the process of the codification of an institutional basis of government, the powers of the state, and the legal definition of nationality and rights of citizenship. Each of the British mandates offered particular challenges in this respect.4 The state of Iraq, composed of the former Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul, was both an expression of the international ideals of selfdetermination but also of British imperial design. Initially founded on the agreement of the League of Nations and the Treaty of Lausanne, its principal constitutional document was the Organic Law of Iraq (1925), first drafted in 1921 by British officials and subsequently revised after extended Iraqi consultation.5 As with its 1923 Egyptian counterpart, the Iraqi constitution provided for a strong monarchy, with the Hashemite King Faysal, a newcomer to Iraq, paradoxically serving as a figure of national unity. Like Egypt, Iraq possessed a bicameral parliament but with the Senate wholly appointed by the King and a Chamber of Deputies elected by universal male suffrage of all Iraqis of 20 years of age and over. The election process set up an indirect system with primary electors voting for secondary selectors (in a ration of 250:1), who in turn would elect deputies.6 In Transjordan a similar two-stage election process was prescribed (here the ration was 200:1) by the Organic Law of 1928, where all males of 18 and over were entitled to vote for secondary electors for the 14 elected members of a 21 member Legislative Council, which acted as an advisory body to Emir Abdullah, brother of Faysal.7 In contrast to the monarchies of Iraq and Transjordan, in Palestine the Order in Council of 1922 that served as the constitution set the British High Commissioner as the chief executive and established a Legislative Council as a national representative body.8 From the beginning, however, Palestinian politics was riven with the struggle between Arab and Jewish nationalism and the Council

4 Norman Bentwich, “Mandated Territories: Palestine and Mesopotamia (Iraq),” British Yearbook of International Law 2 (1921): 48–56. 5 One of the chief points of discussion had been the powers given to the king that the Iraqi committee had thought excessive in the original draft; Majid Khadduri, Independent Iraq (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), 15. 6 Majid Khadduri, The Government of Iraq (Jerusalem: New Publishers Iraq, 1944), 15. Direct election was not employed until the elections of January 1953. 7 Mary C. Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 97. 8 Palestine, The Palestine Order in Council, August 10, 1922 http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL .NSF/0/C7AAE196F41AA055052565F50054E656 (accessed August 30, 2015).

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foundered with the boycotted elections of 1923.9 In 1935 a new British proposal for a legislative body again came to nought with only the system of municipal government offering any official avenue for political representation.10 Without an effective constitution and representative institutions, politics in Palestine was therefore largely determined by the contest between Arab and Zionist nationalisms and offered little space for citizen involvement at a national level.

The National Citizenry

Integral to the process of setting up the constitutional basis for these states was a legal definition of nationality and citizen rights. In the case of Egypt this seemed less urgent. Although the 1923 constitution contained a section On the Rights and Duties of Egyptians stating important principles, until the passing of a new nationality law in 1928 Egyptian nationality still relied on nineteenthcentury Ottoman legislation. In the mandates, the general principle of the nationality laws was that ­former Ottoman subjects would automatically acquire the nationality of the state in which they were now resident.11 This was most clearly the case in the Iraqi Nationality Law of 1924, while a similar provision applied in Transjordan. In Palestine, where the terms of the mandate had specifically required the establishment of a citizenship law, the Palestinian Citizenship Order of 1925 included the same provision and thus immediately accorded citizenship to the majority Arab population in Palestine.12 More particular were the conditions for the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship: the applicant had to have been resident for a certain period of time, demonstrate a good character, and possess an “adequate knowledge” of English, Arabic, or Hebrew. The last point clearly referenced the promise of the British government to support Palestine as a Jewish national homeland (which had been formally incorporated into the 9 10 11 12

Palestine Royal Commission [henceforth Peel Commission]: Report, 1937, 56. Peel Commission, 347–352. Norman Bentwich, “Nationality in Mandated Territories Detached from Turkey,” British Yearbook of International Law 7 (1926): 97. Norman Bentwich, “Palestine Nationality and the Mandate,” Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law 21 (1939): 230–232. The term “citizenship” in the legislation seems distinctive to Palestine; elsewhere in Iraq and Transjordan the term nationality is favoured in the legislation. For a detailed discussion of the period 1917–25 see Lauren Banko, “The Creation of Palestinian Citizenship under an International Mandate. 1918– 1925: Legislation, Discourses and Practices,” Citizenship Studies 16 (2012): 641–655.

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terms of the mandate), and provided a legal support for Jewish immigration and settlement. Definitions of nationality were much more exclusive in the Gulf States. Kuwaiti nationality was only defined in law in 1948 and was restricted to a narrowly defined group made up of members of the ruling family, those who had been permanently resident in Kuwait since 1899 (a date which referenced the agreement between Britain and Mubarak the Great), and children of Kuwaiti fathers or of Arab or Muslim men born in Kuwait after that time. Naturalisation was allowed after 10 years’ residence but was also conditional on proficiency in Arabic.13 A decade later, in 1959, the law was amended with 1920 (the year of the war between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) now set as the date by which permanent residence had to be established, while the requirements for naturalisation became more restricted.14 With the withdrawal of the British and subsequent independence in 1961, citizenship was soon extended to many Bedouin in return for military service, which was used effectively to break down loyalties to tribal sheikhs and to secure electoral loyalty.15 These changing legal definitions of the national citizen stood in contrast to the foreign national. Here, the long tradition of the Ottoman Capitulations, a regime of legal and economic privileges enjoyed by foreign nationals that dated back to at least the sixteenth-century, had emphasised the advantages of foreign nationality over the comparative disadvantages of local citizenship. Indeed, for this reason the extrajudicial rights enjoyed by foreigners became an increasing target of nationalist criticism from the late nineteenth-century for compromising local sovereignty and reinforcing the hierarchy of the colonial order. With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire the Capitulations were abolished in Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq, presumably as contrary to the principles of the mandate. In Egypt, the state with the most established historical identity, they paradoxically remained in force until their abolition in the Treaty of Montreux in 1937. The regime of Mixed Courts, created in 1875 to deal with legal disputes between Egyptians and foreigners, lingered on until their dissolution in 1949, even if some of the practices if not rights given

13

Jill Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 79, 186n. 14 Anh Nga Longva, “Citizenship in the Gulf States, Conceptualization and Practice,” in Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications, ed. Nils A. Butenschøn et al., (Syracuse, ny: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 185. 15 Crystal, Oil and Politics, 88. In the same year, a nationality law granted Qatari citizenship to those who had been resident in Qatar prior to 1930 (Crystal, Oil and Politics, 149–150).

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to those with foreign nationality continued in some form, particularly in the justice system.16

Minority Rights

The Ottoman Empire had been governed by a Muslim political elite that accommodated different religious communities through the millet system that delegated authority to the community on matters of property and personal status. While this system had been significantly eroded under the impact of the Tanzimat, religious and ethnic identity still remained important social markers in Middle Eastern society at the end of the First World War. The dismemberment of the Empire after the war, with the consequent dislocation of different ethnic and religious communities, called for new political arrangements which took account of this pluralism. The British solution was to grant limited recognition to the rights and claims of certain minorities, in part because it had the virtue of winning the support of these communities, but also because it satisfied the requirements of the League of Nations. In Iraq this religious and ethnic diversity, which comprised the three large communities of the Shiʿis, Sunnis, and Kurds, along with smaller groups such as the Turkomen, Yazidis, and various Christians sects, offered particular challenges to the project of nationhood and national citizenship. To accommodate this diversity the British authorities allocated specific sectarian representation at different levels of government. At the local level the Provincial and District Councils provided for representation of non-Muslims, with dedicated seats for Christian, Jewish, Sabaean, and Yazidi communities. At the national level the Chamber of Deputies included four Jewish and Christian deputies each, out of a total of 88 members during the mandate period. The principle if not the same figures continued into the 1950s.17 In Transjordan, where the population was more homogeneous, minority communities were also granted specific representatives. The first Transjordanian Legislative Council (1928–31), made up of 16 elected members (and 22 members in all), allocated five seats to minorities (two Circassian and three Christian representatives). 16

17

Anthony Gorman, “Regulation, Reform and Resistance in the Middle East Prison,” In Cultures of Confinement: A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America, ed. Frank Dikötter and Ian Brown (London: Hurst, 2007), 114–115. These consisted of two Christian and one Jewish representative in Mosul; two Christians and two Jews in Baghdad, and one Christian and one Jew in Basra province; Khadduri, Government of Iraq, 15, 305.

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Such provisions in part were designed to provide specific communities with a guaranteed voice in the new political system but they also offered the potential for distortion of the principle of equal representation. In Transjordan Circassians enjoyed representation more than fivefold that of the mainstream Muslim population in proportion to their numbers, a policy likely to have been prompted by the generally pro-palace sentiment of that community.18 The legal recognition of tribal rights both in Jordan and Iraq demonstrated a similar strategy of working within existing social hierarchies in order to win support. In Transjordan two tribal representatives (one each from the north and south) were appointed to the Legislative Council by a local commission of ten members while tribal sheikhs in Iraq were granted the right to adjudicate disputes and collect taxes.19 In addition to political representation, the religious and cultural right to maintain separate education systems was recognised.20 In Iraq, Kurdish primary schools were established in the north of the country and there were soon demands for Kurdish secondary schools and a Training College. The Local Languages Law of 1926 provided for the use of Kurdish in administration and primary schools in the north but Arabic remained the principal language of instruction in secondary and higher education.21 With the failure of the creation of genuine civil spirit these divisions could take on political implications. In Palestine the recognition of English, Hebrew, and Arabic as official languages and the constitutional right for different communities to maintain their own schooling system in their own language saw the separate development of education and civic ideals, a fact later bewailed by the Peel Commission.22

18

19

20 21 22

Notionally one elected member represented 5000 Circassians, 7000 Christians and 27000 Muslims. The first post-independence constitution of 1947 which replaced the Organic Law continued this practice with the 20 elected members of the Assembly being made up of 12 Muslims, four Christians, two tribal representatives and two representatives for Circassians and Chechens; see Abdo Baaklini, Guilain Denoeux and Robert Springborg, Legislative Politics in the Arab World (Boulder CO-London: Lynne Rienner, 1999), 135, 137. Kamal Salibi, The Modern History of Jordan (London-New York: i.b. Tauris, 1993), 115; Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),  37. For Palestine, see Peel Commission, 48, 52–53. Orit Bashkin, The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford ca: Stanford University Press, 2009), 44, 182–183. Peel Commission 36–37: Articles 15 and 22 recognise different languages and that each community is entitled “to maintain its own schools for the education of its members in its own language.” See also Peel Commission, 333–334.

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Formal recognition was only one way in which rights for minority groups might be acknowledged. Just as Copts had been favoured in the Egyptian bureaucracy before the First World War so the British policy of favouring Sunnis (only about 20 per cent of the total population) in the Iraqi administration at the expense of the Shiʿis and Kurds also undermined a genuine sense of national community that could be exploited later by politicians.23 In Iraq this would have great implications in the immediate post-independence era. The Assyrians, a Christian refugee community from Anatolia, who were favoured by the British in the recruitment of the Iraqi levies during the 1920s, were left exposed as perceived allies of the British after independence was granted in 1932. Despite the guarantees that had been offered by the Iraqi government to respect minorities, too readily accepted by the British, the violent suppression of the Assyrians in 1933 demonstrated fractures in the new national community.24 The potential for tension between the concepts of national citizen and community member has continued until the present in various forms. In its dealing with the issue of minority representation, British policy never institutionalised sectarian identity to the extent that the French administration did in Lebanon. However, the formal recognition of ethnic identity, ostensibly contrived to be inclusive, could also serve as an effective divide-and-rule strategy that arguably undermined the concept of a single national citizenry. In Egypt, a country which had the longest tradition of political and social continuity, British machinations at times fed social tension between religious and ethnic groups. Jews and Copts, as well as many foreigners, had been favoured by the British in government employment in the years before the First World War. In the Unilateral Declaration of Independence of 1922, the notion of a national community was further undermined by the British insistence on reserving to itself the right of protection of the minorities, a position that ran the risk of implicating Copts and Egyptian Jewry within the colonial order. The subsequent discussion and rejection by the Egyptian constitutional committee of a provision for separate parliamentary representation for Copts was significantly preoccupied with how the British government might exploit this issue.25 While the majority decision to reject such a provision was later styled as a statement of the integrity of the national citizen body, the ongoing issue of Coptic representation in parliament demonstrates the continuing political sensitivity of the religious dimension of Egyptian citizenship. 23 Tripp, History of Iraq, 31. 24 Ibid., 80. 25 B.L. Carter, The Copts in Egyptian Politics, 1918–1952 (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1986), 133–142.

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The Citizen and Political Rights

In presiding over a process of codification of nationality laws and constitutions, and the recognition of various minority rights, the British sought to lay the foundations of and win support for its programme of state-building. Nationality laws served to define citizen status but specific rights were often undefined or circumscribed by law and, in any case, were conceived from the top down. The restrictive nature of these legal formulations and the constraints of local practices severely inhibited the growth of an active and genuine citizenship. This was particularly the case with political rights and representation. In Egypt, the British occupation of the country in 1882 and the defeat of Ahmad ʿUrabi’s movement had represented, among other things, a setback for Egyptian constitutionalism. Now under British occupation, the new constitution of 1883 laid down provisions for a consultative body although with weak powers. Subsequent developments, the setting up of a Legislative Council, General Assembly, and Provincial Councils, put in place a complex system of indirect elections that in theory were popularly elected but which in reality were dominated by the notability. This strategy became characteristic of British policy in the Middle East. Writing in his annual report presented to the British parliament, Cromer drew deeply from the well of orientalist imagery and made clear the paternal principle at work, that the majority of the Egyptian population was not yet qualified, and not even willing, to exercise full political rights, …the interests of the masses must continue to a great extent to be represented by European officials or by Egyptian officials who have assimilated European ideas. No paper constitution, however ably conceived, can suddenly give voice and representation to a people who have for centuries been voiceless and unrepresented, and who have not as yet given any practical proof that they wish to be represented, although the opportunity for expressing the wish is afforded to them.26 This self-serving position of a restricted political class was further exemplified in the attitude towards political parties. The first formal political parties in Egypt were established in 1907, the same year Cromer was writing, predominantly as vehicles for nationalist sentiment. Before long they were dissolved amidst British concerns of mounting political opposition and social unrest. 26

Parliamentary Papers, Egypt. No. 1, Reports by His Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt and the Soudan in 1906, No. 1 (1907), 29.

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The rise of the Wafd after the First World War, followed by a number of smaller parties under the constitutional arrangements of 1923, demonstrated that political life was dominated by elements of the traditional landowning elites with limited input from the party membership, even if it did at times attract a mass following. In Iraq during the 1920s party political life was similarly restricted in scope, programme, and levels of participation. As early as 1922 the late Ottoman proArab groups of al-ʿAhd al-ʿIraqi and Haras al-Istiqlal had given way to a series of new political organisations formed largely in response to the question of Iraqi independence and its ongoing relationship with Britain, but they offered little diversity in their domestic programmes.27 Moreover, the scope for political opposition was limited, a point made clear by the banning of political parties and the dissolution of parliament in 1922 by the British High Commissioner, Percy Cox, following public protest against the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty.28 When p ­ arty life resumed later on in the decade it once again revolved around an elite circle of notables and their personal followings. New political parties, such as the ʿAhd Party of Nuri al-Saʿid, formed at the beginning of the 1930s on a common platform of ending the mandate, demonstrated the weakness of party life by dissolving themselves soon after Iraqi independence was recognised in 1932; they had lost their raison d’être.29 The emergence soon after of the Ahali Group, a coalition of intellectuals and professionals, signalled a new and progressive ­vision that articulated a democratic programme based on liberal, even socialist, ideas such as freedom of speech, human rights, equality, and justice. Hemmed in by repressive government, these ideals were compromised by Ahali’s relationship with the military after the coup in 1936.30 Not until after the Second World War did organised political life revive but the pattern established in the 1920s of personalised organisations subsequently suppressed by government seemed set. A number of parties were closed down in 1948, then, after a period of relative freedom, were again dissolved in 1954 in response to their opposition to the Baghdad Treaty. The potential for a citizenry actively engaged in political life suffered accordingly. In Palestine, party political life was also limited. Up until the early 1930s Arab political activity centred around the Arab Executive Committee, an umbrella

27 Khadduri, Independent Iraq, 29–30. 28 Tariq Y. Ismael, The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Iraq (Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 13. 29 Khadduri, Independent Iraq, 29–30. 30 Tripp, History of Iraq, 84–86.

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body that convened a series of congresses.31 The establishment of the Istiqlal Party in 1932 marked the beginning of a period of more formal party organisations, but those that followed again served more as vehicles for the traditional elites and their followers rather than of any real ideological programme.32 In the mid-1930s all but the Istiqlal Party united to form the Higher Arab Committee, but were subsequently banned by the British in October 1937 following the outbreak of the Arab Revolt. Zionist party life represented a greater range across the political spectrum on the left and right but all ultimately shared an exclusive nationalism. In the Gulf participatory politics was governed as much by a restricted franchise as by political space. Municipal government provided the forum for the exercise of political rights, at least for the local merchant class. In Bahrain this was established at the beginning of the 1920s and progressively acquired authority from the British political agent.33 In Kuwait, the establishment of the municipality in 1930 and biennial elections provided a regular platform for a political contest among the mercantile notability. This political momentum culminated in the Majlis movement of 1938 where elements of the merchant class sought to challenge the authority of the ruling family and speak in the name of the people.34 The formation of the National Bloc as the first political party in Kuwait, and the convening of an Assembly in July over the next six months, saw the drafting of a basic law. Ultimately, however, the movement collapsed, after initial British encouragement was withdrawn when it felt its interests threatened.35 One important exception, where a political organisation emerged from beyond the traditional ruling class circles – or, in Palestine, outside of the contest between Jewish and Arab nationalism – was the communist movement, first formalised with the establishment of the Egyptian Communist Party in 1922/23. Here, the movement was quickly repressed as Egyptian nationalists who, although critical of the British suppression of political life before 1914, were quick to show that they were just as willing to suppress the challenge of radical reform that they perceived in the Bolsheviks. The trial and imprisonment 31 32

Peel Commission, 176. Ibid., 87. Among these parties were the Palestine Arab Party (Husseini family); the National Defence Party (Nashashibi family) and the Arab Reform Party (Khalidi family), all set up in the 1934–35 period. 33 Nelida Fuccaro, Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 124–125. 34 Crystal, Oil and Politics, 46–47. 35 Ibid., 48–51.

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of communist leaders in Cairo in 1924 was the first significant blow in the campaign that continued throughout the decade and drove the movement underground until its reappearance during the Second World War.36 A similar phenomenon occurred in Iraq and Palestine during the 1930s, with the Iraqi elites in the former and British authorities in the latter case, imprisoning or expelling communist activists.37

The Press and Freedom of Speech

If party political life was tightly circumscribed by law and dominated by elite factions, freedom of speech and particularly of the press offered greater potential as a forum for the promotion of new political and social ideas, the criticism and debate of government policies, and the demands for citizen rights. Here Britain showed itself willing to maintain and consolidate the Ottoman strategy of restricting the acceptable spectrum of free speech. By the middle of the nineteenth century the press in the Middle East had begun to emerge as a medium for more than just government notices and to carry public news and political opinion. The promulgation of the Ottoman press law of 1865 launched a tradition of press regulation that would seek to control this outlet by stipulating certain qualifications for newspaper ownership (30 years of age and no criminal record) and in time increasingly constrain the freedom to express political opinion. In Egypt the Publications Law of 1881 placed greater restrictions on freedom of speech and introduced imprisonment as a judicial punishment for transgressors. By contrast, the British occupation the next year was followed by a period of relative freedom until the reinstatement then reinforcement of the press laws in early 1909 formed part of a general crackdown on the insurgent nationalist movement.38 Yet, while the virtues of a free and open press were regularly intoned, and indeed, often endorsed by constitutions, the banning of newspapers and other publications that were (usually) deemed to have exceeded the limits of appropriate criticism of government policy or figures was common. The Ottoman press laws were carried over in large part into the interwar period but mandatory administrations and their successors readily added to this regulatory

36

Anthony Gorman, “Containing Political Dissent in Egypt before 1952,” in Policing and Prisons in the Middle East ed. L. Khalili and J. Schwedler (London: Hurst, 2010), 162–163. 37 Ismael, Communist Party of Iraq, 23–24. 38 Gorman, “Containing Political Dissent,” 161.

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and increasingly punitive regime.39 Press freedom may have been guaranteed explicitly in the constitution but it was also restricted by official concerns about safeguarding the “public order.”40 During the interwar period in Egypt the changing press law regime required greater financial guarantees for newspaper ownership and afforded less press freedom under an increasingly repressive penal code. The practice of suspending or banning newspapers became a regular practice during the 1920s and 1930s, one that was focused not only on opposition party newspapers deemed to be a danger to the fundamental safety of the state but also on journalists themselves who were imprisoned for criticising in print the government or king.41 In late Ottoman-era Iraq and Palestine a press had also begun to forge a tradition of public comment and discourse of rights.42 After the end of the First World War, as new state boundaries were drawn this tradition continued and with greater energy. In Iraq, newspapers in English, Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish published from 1918–19 engaged with the pressing political issues of the day.43 Beside the sober Government Gazette a series of dailies presented a range of opinions on the political future and constitutional basis of Iraq. AlIstiqlal, for example, launched in September 1920, proposed a Hashemite monarchy, while al-Djila called for a republic; all called for democracy in which the importance of freedom of speech should be clearly recognised. The authorities thought otherwise when, for example, after carrying an editorial hostile to King Faisal, al-Djila was banned.44 The practice of state regulation of the press was maintained thereafter and indeed codified in the Iraqi constitution of 1930.45 The policy continued into the independence era. A Press Bureau was established and the press law of 1954, issued following the hostile response to the Iraqi government’s signing of the Baghdad Pact, made clear the limitations of the freedom of speech.46 39

For a discussion of Ottoman press laws, see Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East (New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 65–66, 92–93. 40 See, for example, the Egyptian constitution of 1922, Art. 14 (“Freedom of opinion shall be ensured.”) and Art. 15 (“The press shall be free within the limits of the law. Censorship of newspapers shall be prohibited….”) http://www.constitutionnet.org/ files/1923_-_egyptian_constitution_english_1.pdf (last accessed August 30, 2015). 41 Gorman, “Containing Political Dissent,” 165. 42 Longrigg, Iraq, 44–45. 43 For details, ibid., 110. 44 Bashkin, Other Iraq, 21–23. 45 Ayalon, Press in the Arab Middle East, 260 n. 25. This was also true of the constitutions of Lebanon (1926) and Syria (1930), and the Organic Law of Jordan (1928). 46 Bashkin, Other Iraq, 107.

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In Palestine likewise an increasingly regulated and restrictive press regime developed in response to growing political agitation. The Shaw Commission’s recommendation of “the curtailment of the mischievous activities of the Press” was formalised with a Press Ordinance in 1933 which required a licence for the publication of a newspaper and allowed for the suspension of a newspaper that was “likely to endanger the public peace.”47 In the following years both Hebrew and Arabic language papers suffered suspension and prosecution.48 In 1936 alone Arab newspapers were suspended 34 times and warned officially on 11 other occasions. Responding to what it saw as the continuous negative tone of much of the Arab press (“The Arab Press excelled itself in denunciation of the Government and the Jews”49), the Peel Commission recommended a further extension in the powers of the press laws, a policy that assisted in suppressing the Arab Revolt and was facilitated by the introduction of the Emergency Regulations.50 The press played a similar role of a representative voice for an increasingly articulate citizenry in the Gulf. In Bahrain, from at least the 1940s, it served as an important forum for the discussion of democratic values and the rights of the individual, and, in the 1950s, became a place where proArab nationalist ideas could be disseminated, despite the attempts of the British Agency to curb criticism and maintain the political status quo.51

The Citizen as Worker

If party political rights remained limited and the right to freedom of expression was often curbed, the demand for social and economic rights could come from other quarters. The labour movement provided one important locus for this struggle where (usually) male workers used the threat or actual withdrawal of their labour to secure an improvement – in their working conditions, particularly regarding pay, hours of work, and safety conditions – from employers and legal recognition from state authorities within a broader framework of workers’ economic rights. The emergence of an organised modern labour movement in the Arab world began in Egypt with industrial action and the establishment of workers

47 Peel Commission, 83, 190. 48 Ibid., 193. 49 Ibid., 88. 50 Ibid., 132; Ayalon, Press in the Arab Middle East, 100. 51 Fuccaro, Histories of City and State, 178–180.

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associations at the end of the nineteenth century.52 Initially the movement was predominantly led by foreign workers but, even before World War i, the cause of workers’ rights had been taken up by the nationalist movement and represented as part of a broader programme of citizen rights. During this stage the state authorities took little action beyond a policing role during violent confrontations between workers and employers, or at times facilitated negotiations. However, as the movement gained in support and confidence it became a more significant expression of social forces, especially after World War i. In 1919 the labour protests in Egypt, part of a campaign of widespread resistance to continued occupation, prompted the government to create the Labour Conciliation Board in August 1919, which recognised the principle of the rights of workers and the need to provide official avenues of redress while at the same time offering a means of containing an unpredictable and occasionally unruly social movement.53 However, largely siding with the employer, the Board proved ineffective at dealing with labour disputes and was replaced by the Labour Office in 1930 (later the Labour Department in 1936), ominously a part of the Public Security Department and drawing on staff from security agencies that suggested a tone of repression over conciliation.54 It was not until September 1942 that the pro-British Wafd government granted the first legal recognition to trade unions, which had to be registered by the Ministry of Social Affairs.55 This state strategy of co-optation and control of the labour movement that had already been established would characterise the post-1952 approach to state-labour relations.56 In Iraq, where the extent of industrialisation and the size of the workforce was smaller than in Egypt, an organised labour movement was later in emerging. Even at the end of the 1920s, the oil companies (Iraq Petroleum Company and the Khanaqin Oil Company), which employed about 3000 workers between them, and the railways, with about 5700 workers, provided the only significant mass workforces.57 From the last emerged probably the first genuine labour union, the Artisans (or Mechanics) Association (Jamʿiyyat Ashab alSanʿa), established in 1929 under the leadership of Muhammad Salih al-Qazzaz 52

53 54 55 56 57

For a discussion of this, see Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882–1954 (London: i.b. Tauris, 1988), 48–82. Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 116. Ibid., 194, 206. Law 85, Ibid., 293. Marsha Pripstein Posusney, Labor and the State in Egypt, Workers, Unions and Economic Restructuring (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 52. Iraq Administration Reports 1914–1932 (vol. 10, [Slough]: Archive Editions, 1992), 245.

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during a campaign of strike action calling for better conditions and labour laws. Railway workers also launched strikes in 1930–31, calling for a reduction in working hours.58 In the last full year of the mandate the potential for labour to serve as an expression for the social rights of citizens became manifest. In response to an increasingly difficult economic climate, exacerbated by the imposition of a municipal tax, the union organised a general strike in Baghdad in July 1931. The authorities responded by dissolving the Artisans Association, while the workers reacted by setting up the Workers Federation of Iraq the following year. Following an organised boycott against the British-owned Baghdad Electric Light and Power Company in 1933–34, the Federation was banned and the labour movement was suppressed for the next decade, even if labour disruptions continued.59 This series of strikes had it made clear to some Iraqi politicians that there needed to be a degree of recognition of the rights of workers. In December 1931 a proposal was put before the Chamber of Deputies calling for the limitation of working hours, provision of holiday pay, and preference for local over foreign labour in foreign companies. After considerable debate, the proposal was passed and forwarded to the government for consideration.60 This was the beginning of a formal if limited recognition by the state of the importance of labour and indeed may have been prompted by the establishment of a Department of Labour Affairs, one of the conditions of joining the League of Nations.61 The Labour Code of 1936 marked another step in workers’ protection, even if it appears not to have been fully implemented.62 That same year, with the coup of Bakr Sidqi, the military took on the leading role in dealing with industrial disputes.63 Workers’ rights remained on the agenda. In 1940 an attempt to amend the electoral law and provide for specific trade union ­parliamentary representation was blocked by the Minister of Justice, acting on advice of his British advisor, Sir Edwin Drower.64 In 1942 an amendment to 58

Iraq Administration Reports, 1920–31, vol. 10, 243, and Ismael, Communist Party of Iraq, 312, give slightly differing accounts of these events. 59 Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton nj: Princeton University Press, 1978; reprint. London: Saqi, 2004), 297. 60 Iraq Administration Reports, 1920–31, vol. 10, 245. 61 Philip W. Ireland, Iraq: A Study in Political Development (London: J. Cape, 1937), 449. 62 Longrigg, Iraq, 246. 63 Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, “Labor and National Liberation: The Trade Union Movement in Iraq, 1920–1958,” Arab Studies Quarterly 5 (spring 1983): 149–150. 64 Drower had been one of the authors of the initial draft of the Organic Law in 1921 and continued as an advisor in the Ministry of Justice until 1946; Majid Khadduri, Independent Iraq (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), 14–15, 302; Longrigg, Iraq, 166.

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the Labour Code of 1936 legislated better conditions for female workers and a range of other measures, including paid holidays, workers’ compensation, and a mechanism for arbitrating labour disputes. Before the end of the war various trade unions had been formed and Labour Exchanges established by the government to deal with problems of unemployment. The formation of a “Rights of Workmen” movement during this period showed the labour movement embracing a broader political strategy.65 The immediate post-war years witnessed greater union activity while the government sought to respond to workers’ demands with the aid of a British labour expert.66 In Palestine the struggle for workers’ rights was reflected in the contest between the Zionist and Arab nationalist movements. The Histadrut, a federation of Jewish labour established in 1920, defended the cause of Jewish labour and was one of a number of proto-state Zionist institutions that would form part of the state of Israel. Arab labour began to organise itself during the 1920s with the establishment of the Palestine Arab Workers Society (paws) by railway workers in Haifa in 1925, partly as a response to the Histadrut’s hostile attitude to the establishment of a non-Zionist union.67 A nationwide Arab labour conference held in January 1930 brought together a broad spectrum of labour activists calling for an eight hour day, the right to strike, and the formation of a Palestinian Arab federation, criticising at the same time the British use of Jewish contractors and the anti-Arab character of the Histadrut policies. In response, the Histadrut established an Arab section in May 1932, called the Palestine Labour League, which continued as a separate organisation until 1959 when Israeli Arabs were finally allowed to join Histadrut as full members.68 In Palestine, as in Egypt, the British administration sought to recognise and co-opt workers’ claims by setting up a Labour Department in 1942, charged with responsibility for the investigation of working conditions, the regulation of trade unions, and labour legislation.69 In the critical period after the Second World War a number of organisations merged to form the Arab Workers’ Congress and continued to agitate for workers’ rights, sometimes in collaboration with members of paws and the Histadrut, but ultimately the looming 65 Longrigg, Iraq, 312. 66 Ismael, Communist Party of Iraq, 15–16; Longrigg, Iraq, 386. 67 Jane Power, “‘Real Unions’: Arab Organized Labor in British Palestine,” Arab Studies Quarterly 20 (Winter 1998): 15. 68 Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948 (Berkeley-London: University of California Press, 1996), 197. 69 Power, “‘Real Unions’,” 18. R.M. Graves, who had served as the director of the Labour Department in Egypt, was appointed to the equivalent position in Palestine; Lockman, Comrades and Enemies, 283.

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confrontation of 1948 would see nationalist terms of reference trump common workers’ demands. The demand for the rights of workers in Egypt, Palestine, and Iraq emerged out of a broader political struggle, at times nationalist, at times class-based, which brought attention to various social and economic claims. In the Gulf, workers also fought for social rights but the different relation between nationality and worker led to variant outcomes. In Bahrain during the 1940s and 1950s workers played an important part in seeking to establish a public space for a genuine and engaged citizen body.70 By contrast, in Kuwait, where the relationship between worker and national was rather different, other considerations came into play. Here Kuwaiti legislation was used to pre-empt the danger of cooperation between the local and growing foreign work force by separating the Kuwaiti workforce from foreign labour by offering the former specific privileges.71 In 1959 a labour law gave nationals priority in the hiring of workers in the Kuwaiti Oil Company and legislation regarding the formation of unions provided Kuwaitis, then Arabs, with certain privileges over foreign workers. In 1965 two labour federations were formed and subsequently merged in the General Federation of Kuwaiti Workers, now co-opted by the state. Similar tactics were used in government employment when the Civil Service Law of 1960 reserved senior posts and pensions for Kuwaitis only.

British Legacies

British power in the Middle East oversaw a process governed by the interplay between its imperial policies, calculated compromises between British authorities and local elites, and a range of responses to popular action which determined the forum for the contestation of citizen rights. The constitutions laid down in Egypt, Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq employed the language of nationality, of representative institutions, of the rights of freedom of association and freedom of speech, and so raised the expectations for an active citizenship. However, the exercise of political rights through the ballot box and of freedom of speech through publications and legal recourse were marginalised and neutralised, often by the very legal system itself. The constriction of party political life, the use of imprisonment to curb opposition voices, and censorship of the press had become a feature of Egyptian political life even before the First World War and would be taken up elsewhere. 70 Fuccaro, Histories of City and State, 176–190. 71 Crystal, Oil and Politics, 79–80.

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In Iraq, the British vision of creating a new state and citizenry rested on the legal foundation of a constitution, nationality law, and the recognition of minority rights. Yet the effectiveness of these legal instruments was encumbered by British imperial purpose and its compromise with local elites. Political, social, and economic rights often remained abstract without sufficient local engagement or support for them to be sustained and developed. As Khadduri noted, “The form of the Iraq Government was determined […] under the impact of Western ideals; the forces which affected its working were to be found in existing local conditions.”72 Nor was there an adequate local institutional basis for their implementation.73 According to Abu Jaber the situation in Jordan was not much different, The Organic Law [of 1928] was not meant to advance the cause of democracy, nor did it encourage the Jordanian people along the path of experimentation with democracy. If anything, even the less-than-average voter became cynical and disinterested. The mandatory power, in its preoccupation with stability and its shortsighted self-interest prevented the growth of a healthy opposition.74 State institutions were unable to support the emergence of a participatory citizenship, resulting in a general failure to nurture a genuine civic spirit and allegiance to the state. Commenting on developments in Iraq in the late 1930s, some years after the end of the mandate, Ireland noted An even greater obstacle was the lack of social consciousness embracing the State. Not yet had a sense of loyalty and duty to the nation arisen to surmount the differences between tribesmen and townsmen, between Sunni and Shiʿi, and between Muslims and minority communities or to replace personal opportunism. Patriotism still denoted independence without obligations to the State.75

72 Khadduri, Government of Iraq, 22. 73 “The mandate had left Iraq with a democratic form of government on paper, but without the institutions to implement it in practice.” Stefanie K. Wichhart, “During the Second British Occupation of Iraq, 1941–5,” Journal of Contemporary History 48 (2013): 535. 74 Kamel S. Abu Jaber, “The Legislature of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan: A Study in Political Development,” Muslim World 59 (1969): 225. 75 Ireland, Iraq, 424–425.

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In Palestine the attempt to construct a state and citizen body rested on the obvious tension, if not contradiction, of British support for a Jewish national homeland and Arab claims of self-determination. By the mid-1930s the idea of Palestinian citizenship had proved a manifest failure and the British vision of a common citizenship open to both Arab and Jew was not shared ­widely.76 Instead the aspirations of citizenship were largely mediated through the contest between Arab and Zionist for political sovereignty in Palestine. As the Peel Commission stated in 1936: “[…] to maintain that Palestinian citizenship has any moral meaning is a mischievous pretence. Neither Arab nor Jew has any sense of service to a single State.”77 Its recommendation of partition recognised the impasse and subsequent events made the failure utterly apparent. With the triumph of the Zionist movement in 1948, this legacy of mutually exclusive visions laid the basis for the differential citizenship that has since operated in Israel, where Arab citizens have been accorded second class status. The legal protections and the constitutional guarantees notwithstanding, the range of strategies employed by the British government, often with willing local elites, to undermine citizen rights were embraced by their local successor governments to even greater effect after the departure of the British. Martial law was the favoured means to suspend the civil code readily taken up by the post-independence governments to deal with political disorder. Applied in Egypt by the British from 1914 until 1923, it was later proclaimed by Egyptian governments on a number of occasions, such as in 1947, in May 1948 and again in January 1952, to facilitate state repression without being impeded by legal safeguards.78 Under the post-1952 regime it became a standard instrument in the guise of the State of Emergency Law, applied through much of the period 1967–2011. In Palestine, a range of security regulations developed during the mandate period qualified or suspended legal rights, such as after the Wailing Wall incident in 1929, and with the introduction of Emergency Regulations during the Arab Revolt of the late 1930s.79 In Israel martial law was introduced among the Arab population from the foundation of the state until 1966.

76 77 78 79

In 1936 only about 57 percent of all Jewish residents entitled to Palestinian citizenship had claimed it, Peel Commission, 332. Peel Commission, 371. Anthony Gorman, “Containing Political Dissent in Egypt before 1952,” 165–166. The introduction of martial law had been one of the central recommendations of the Palestine Royal Commission, Peel Commission, 368.

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In Iraq it was employed frequently to deal with episodes of civil unrest from 1935, again in 1948, 1952 and 1956.80 With the constraints on the practice of citizenship rights, progressive social forces sought various means to articulate, demonstrate, and remonstrate their claims for rights. In this, political organisations (if not formally recognised parties), the press, and social movements such as the labour movement played an important part in seeking to counter an increasingly authoritarian state in liberal dress. The record of the freedom of the press and labour activism across these states shows that these avenues of expression and spaces for an engaged citizenship, while active, were seriously impeded by political, social, and economic obstacles, while claims for rights were often compromised, ignored, manipulated, or modified. The press as an oppositional voice was often strangled and social actors such as the labour movement were co-opted or forced underground. Similar battles were fought by other civil society organisations, such as youth groups and women’s associations.81 At a rhetorical level British policy claimed to be laying the foundations of a democratic polity and enfranchised citizenry, but in practice this was compromised by its priority for political stability and the defence of its interests. The record of British rule shows that security concerns outranked citizen rights and constitutional freedoms gave way to reasons of state when required. In certain circumstances citizen freedoms were brutally qualified, most dramatically with the violent suppression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, the toppling of the al-Gaylani government and reoccupation of Iraq in 1941, and the February 1942 incident in Cairo when King Faruq was forced to install a pro-British Wafd government, all of which demonstrated that the reality of an independent, democratic country governed by its citizens was far from being the case. In due course this pattern of privileging political stability and defending a hold on power practiced by the British authorities was embraced and extended by local elites.

80 81

See, for example, for the 1930s, Longrigg, Iraq, 242. For a discussion of the issue of women’s suffrage in mandate Palestine, see the chapters of Ruth Abrams, “‘Pioneering representatives of the Hebrew people’: Campaigns of the Palestinian Jewish Women’s Equal Rights Association,” in Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire, Citizenship, Nation and Race, ed. Ian Christopher Fletcher et al., (London-New York: Routledge, 2000), 121–137,and Ellen Fleischmann, “Nation, Tradition and Rights: The Indigenous Feminism of the Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1929–1948,” in Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire, Citizenship, Nation and Race, ed. Ian Christopher Fletcher et al., (London-New York: Routledge, 2000), 138–154.

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Conclusion In negotiating its imperial interests, international obligations, and engagement with local elites, the British government oversaw the emergence of a model of citizenship in the Middle East that was both limited and qualified. While in principle based on a model of some form of participatory democracy, British policymakers favoured government controlled by a strong executive head, most often a monarch, in which appointed officials and indirect representation through a secondary voting system muffled the potential impact of the popular electorate. Political parties, where permitted, often reflected the interests of traditional elites and rarely represented a broader public interest. In nurturing this type of political system and citizenry, Britain was more easily able to maintain its control, at least in the short term. Where new organisations or groups sought to challenge the status quo, as did the communist movement, liberal intellectuals, and the labour movement, they were marginalised, repressed or co-opted by the regime. In this environment, the recognition of formal rights or of policies favourable to minority communities risked the emergence of a unified citizen body and provided political opportunities that were both exploited by the British themselves and had the potential to be employed by elements among the indigenous elites to scapegoat or favour particular groups. Whether formally bound by the obligations of the mandate as in Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq, or elsewhere where they were less accountable to the international community, British policies nurtured a calculated compromise between the promotion of a flawed constitutional democracy and its own imperial purpose. In Iraq, balancing the support of the local elites and the ethnic configuration of the state sustained British geopolitical interests, at least for a time, but resulted in an unstable state with an uneven regime of political, social, and economic rights. In Palestine, the attempt to construct a stable polity foundered on the incompatibility of two (or three) conflicting national visions where no general sense of common national citizenship developed between Arab and Jewish communities. As the Peel Commission noted in 1937, Palestine had become not a unified state and society but a land of three flags and three governments where “[…] instead of being drawn together by the common forms and symbols of a single citizenship [the two communities] have adopted the forms and symbols of separate nationhood.”82 In the Gulf states the longstanding treaty arrangements between Britain and the local ruling families provided the latter with the ability to constrain the participation of an active citizenry. The political contest between the ruling families and the 82

Peel Commission, 138.

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merchant class that marked much of the interwar period was, with the arrival of oil revenues, reconfigured so that with British compliance the largesse of the state was able to underwrite a generous social entitlement for an exclusive citizenry even as the exercise of political rights and freedom of speech were circumscribed. These different arrangements and the strategies adopted to counter challenges to them had a clear impact on the development of the body politic and the political culture that would inform the subsequent development of citizenship in the post-colonial age. Ultimately, the British legacy resided in illiberal democracy where limited citizen rights appeared more rhetorical than real and where the institutions set up to service them were not properly rooted in indigenous society but rather compromised by imperial design and elite interest. The local political classes themselves were willing to effectively constrain any sense of dynamic citizenship, often using the authority of the law to contain opposition, curb criticism, and limit activism. In the post-colonial period, the weakness of these liberal institutions and their failure to implant a genuine sense of citizenship and empowerment among the population continued to undermine the state as a genuine vehicle for the expression of the popular will. The undignified British withdrawal from Palestine in May 1948 demonstrated its most dramatic failure in constructing a common citizenship but the toppling of the monarchies by the military of Egypt and Iraq in the 1950s showed that the basis for the authoritarian republican state had already been laid. Bibliography Abrams, Ruth. “‘Pioneering Representatives of the Hebrew People’: Campaigns of the Palestinian Jewish Women’s Equal Rights Association.” In Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire. Citizenship, Nation and Race, edited by Ian Christopher Fletcher, Laura E. Nym Mayhall, and Philippa Levine, 121–137. London-New York: Routledge, 2000. Abu Jaber, Kamel S. “The Legislature of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan: A Study in Political Development.” Muslim World 59 (1969): 220–250. Ayalon, Ami. The Press in the Arab Middle East. New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Baaklini, Abdo, Guilain Denoeux and Robert Springborg. Legislative Politics in the Arab World. Boulder CO-London: Lynne Rienner, 1999. Banko, Lauren, “The Creation of Palestinian Citizenship under an International Mandate. 1918–1925: Legislation, discourses and practices,” Citizenship Studies 16 (2012): 641–655.

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Bashkin, Orit. The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Batatu, Hanna. The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978; reprint. London: Saqi, 2004. Beinin, Joel and Lockman Zachary. Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882–1954. London: I.B. Tauris, 1988. Bentwich, Norman. “Mandated Territories: Palestine and Mesopotamia (Iraq).” British Yearbook of International Law 2 (1921): 48–56. Bentwich, Norman. “Nationality in Mandated Territories Detached from Turkey.” British Yearbook of International Law 7 (1926): 97–109. Bentwich, Norman. “Palestine Nationality and the Mandate.” Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law (1939): 230–232. Butenschøn, Nils A., Uri Davis and Manuel Hassassian. Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications. Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Carter, B.L. The Copts in Egyptian Politics, 1918–1952. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1986. Crystal, Jill. Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Farouk-Sluglett, Marion and Peter Sluglett. “Labor and National Liberation: The Trade Union Movement in Iraq, 1920–1958.” Arab Studies Quarterly 5 (1983): 139–154. Fleischmann, Ellen. “Nation, Tradition and Rights: The Indigenous Feminism of the Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1929–1948.” In Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire, Citizenship, Nation and Race, edited by Ian Christopher Fletcher, Laura E. Nym Mayhall and Philippa Levine, 138–154. London-New York: Routledge, 2000. Fuccaro, Nelida. Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Gorman, Anthony. “Regulation, Reform and Resistance in the Middle East Prison.” In Cultures of Confinement, A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America, ed. Frank Dikötter and Ian Brown, 95–146. London: Hurst, 2007. Gorman, Anthony. “Containing Political Dissent in Egypt before 1952.” In Policing and Prisons in the Middle East, edited by Laleh Khalili and Jillian Schwedler, 157–173. London: Hurst, 2010. Iraq administration reports 1914–1932, 10 vols. [Slough]: Archive Editions, 1992. Ireland, Philip W. Iraq: A Study in Political Development. London: J. Cape, 1937. Ismael, Tariq Y. The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Iraq. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Khadduri, Majid. The Government of Iraq. Jerusalem: New Publishers Iraq, 1944. Khadduri, Majid. Independent Iraq. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951.

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Lockman, Zachary. Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906 –1948. Berkeley-London: University of California Press, 1996. Longrigg, Stephen. Iraq, 1900 to 1950: A Political, Social, and Economic History. London: Oxford University Press, 1953. Longva, Anh Nga. “Citizenship in the Gulf States: Conceptualization and Practice.” In Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications, edited by Nils A. Butenschøn, Uri Davis, and Manuel Hassassian, 179–197. Syracuse N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Maghraoui, Abdeslam M. Liberalism Without Democracy: Nationhood and Citizenship in Egypt, 1922–1936. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Palestine, The Palestine Order in Council, August 10, 1922 http://unispal.un.org/ UNISPAL.NSF/0/C7AAE196F41AA055052565F50054E656 (accessed August 30, 2015). Palestine Royal Commission [The Peel Commission]: Report, 1937. Parliamentary Papers, Egypt. No. 1, Reports by His Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt and the Soudan in 1906, No.  1 (1907). Posusney, Marsha Pripstein. Labor and the State in Egypt. Workers, Unions and Economic Restructuring. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Power, Jane. “‘Real Unions’: Arab Organized Labor in British Palestine.” Arab Studies Quarterly 20 (Winter 1998): 13–28. Salibi, Kamal. The Modern History of Jordan. London-New York: I.B. Tauris, 1993. Tripp, Charles. A History of Iraq. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Wichhart, Stefanie K. “During the Second British Occupation of Iraq, 1941–5.” Journal of Contemporary History 48 (2013): 509–536. Wilson, Mary C. King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

chapter 2

Citizenship, Social Pacts, Authoritarian Bargains, and the Arab Uprisings Roel Meijer This chapter is based on insights from citizenship studies and the idea that state-citizen relations are based on a covenant or social pact between citizens on the one hand, and between citizens and the state on the other. This agreement, either open or tacit, produces a citizenship regime, one which comprises the totality of civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights and duties, social formations, ideological constructions, legal structures, political systems, daily practices, and foreign relations that support, evade, or contest such regimes. Citizenship in this view is not static but a constantly changing concept and practice that is a reflection of these forces within a specific citizenship regime. My main argument is that the present crisis of citizenship in the Middle East is the result of an accumulation of problems that have been caused by three consecutive citizenship regimes over the past two centuries. In the first part of the chapter I will argue that citizenship started off on the wrong foot in the region because under colonial rule it was initially a mark of discrimination and foreign privilege, and later, when local-colonial alliances were made, citizenship worked to further the interests of the indigenous elite. These alliances were swept away – and with them the political entities closely associated with them – after it became clear that the colonial bargain was unable to meet the emerging social and economic demands of the nationalist movements of the 1930s. In the second part of the chapter I will analyse the replacement of the colonial alliance with the so-called “authoritarian bargain” between the newly independent states and the “people.” According to this social contract, one which produced a specific citizenship regime, the state would provide social services (education, health care, pensions) in exchange for a reduced level of civil and, especially, political rights for the people. In the third phase, this bargain started to “unravel” when the state was forced to retreat from its “developmentalist” promises in the 1970s and a Pandora’s Box of demands was opened. The new wave of demands covered the full panoply of civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights which had been contained during the heyday of authoritarianism. The depth of this crisis became manifest during the Arab Uprisings, analysed in the last part of the chapter. In ­almost all countries they led to a new © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_004

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citizenship regime, but in only a few cases, such as Tunisia, were they based on a political consensus. In others, they led to a deepening of the authoritarian bargain, or to a collapse of the social order and a consequent civil war. It is doubtful if the stability pacts countries such as Egypt are now making can meet the earlier demands for a new, more equitable social contract.

The Colonial Citizenship Regime

Citizenship as an Instrument of Exclusion Citizenship as a formal status in its modern form was introduced into the Middle East and North Africa (mena) region as a source of exclusion and discrimination, and did not function there as it had in Europe during the first cycle of expanding inclusion that encompassed new rights and new social classes. Citizenship in the mena region therefore had a completely different history and trajectory from that it had had in Europe. Rather than a sign of emancipation and inclusion, from the standpoint of the indigenous population the citizens/citoyens were the “Other.” During the colonial period citizens were the “legally privileged,”1 while non-citizens were the majority of the population, who were themselves mostly Arab Sunni Muslims. Historically, the status of Europeans in the Middle East was based on the Capitulations. This extraterritorial status had, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, been regulated in specific bilateral agreements between the Ottoman Empire on one side, and France, England, and other European countries on the other, in order to protect the rights of the personnel working in their consulates and merchants from their countries who were working in the Middle East. With the increasing power of Europe in the nineteenth century these rights were gradually expanded, extending to members of minority communities working with European powers, indigenous merchants, and even local tribal leaders, all of whom came under foreign consular jurisdiction, allowing them to evade local taxes and conscription, thereby undermining the sovereignty of the local rulers.2 For instance, in Morocco the two Anglo-Moroccan conventions of “friendship, navigation, commerce,” signed in 1856, ended the 1 Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882–1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 9. 2 Capitulations were treaties of commerce and protection between Muslim rulers and European Christian princes and republics that guaranteed the lives and property of foreign subjects during their stay in Muslim territory. Foreigners were excluded from Islamic jurisdiction and taxation and could practice their religion freely.

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sultan’s trading monopolies and drastically decreased custom duties (and thus the income of the sultan) while at the same time expanding trade with England and extending legal protection to some Moroccans, who became foreign protégés.3 In 1880 the Treaty of Madrid recognised the right of foreigners in Morocco to own land and in 1906 the Treaty of Algeciras even gave the French the right to police the ports of Morocco. Likewise, the Anglo-Tunisian Convention of 1863 gave British citizens the right to work, acquire property, and organise their own courts, as well as being judged under their own legal system.4 The foreign protection of entire minority groups, such as the Maronites in Lebanon by the French and the Greek Orthodox in the Ottoman Empire by the Russians, further undermined local sovereignty. The result was a mosaic of numerous foreign jurisdictions and privileges. The multitude of citizenship regimes backfired when European countries were themselves confronted by other European privileges, as was the case with ­Tunisia after it had become a protectorate of France in 1881.5 The introduction to Egypt in 1875 of the Mixed Courts, which were based on the Code ­Napoléon, was meant to establish a degree of order amidst the chaos of consular courts, each of which applied its own laws. However, in many countries the Capitulations remained intact until the mid-twentieth century. For minority groups, foreign nationality and citizenship rights were a means of escaping local government control. In response to this foreign threat, local rulers tried to impose a uniform, standardised citizenship regime, in which foreign privilege was abolished. For example, the Tanzimat reform introduced by Ottoman rulers in 1856, as well as the Tunisian Security Covenant of 1857, recognised equal rights between the followers of different religions in order to regain their loyalty as full citizens.6 The Tunisian constitution of 1861 and that of the Ottoman Empire of 1876 had the same purpose. These measures proved, however, to be ineffective and new ideas of loyalty to the Empire, such Ottomanism, did little to prevent the fragmentation of the region. The most extreme case of the legal privileging of foreigners and installing a colonial citizenship regime based on discrimination and civil and political

3 Susan Gilson Miller, A History of Modern Morocco (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 23 and 43. 4 Kenneth J. Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 46–47. 5 Mary Dawhurst Lewis, Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881–1938 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 32–33, 125. 6 Perkins, Tunisia, 18–19.

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exclusion was the colonial settler state of Algeria. Because Algeria was considered to be part of France after the first conquest in 1830, citizenship was, in theory, extended to all Muslims, who could acquire the status of citoyens and become “indigènes français d’Algérie.” In practice, though, equal rights through assimilation were denied to them as long as they remained Muslim and held on to the legal personal code based on the Shariʿa and did not accept the French code civile.7 Algerian Muslims would thus remain second-class citizens until well into the twentieth century. This meant that whereas the French colons in Tunisia and Algeria paid less tax, or none at all, and through state policies acquired the best lands and benefited the most from state expenditure and services such as investment in transport and communications, the indigènes (Muslims) worked on marginal lands and were excluded from state benefits and subjected to discriminatory laws.8 Differences in citizen status had social and economic consequences at all levels of society, leading to graded or differentiated citizenship. It meant that in the colonial economy and administrative hierarchy both privilege and an ethnic and religious communitarian division prevailed. In French colonies and protectorates French civil servants earned, in principle, a third more than local employees, known as the “colonial third.”9 In the workplace, skilled foreign workers held the highest and best paid jobs as foremen and inspectors. They alone enjoyed benefits, such as paid leave, medical care, fixed wage scales, and pensions. Below them were the indigenous workers, who enjoyed almost no rights but had permanent jobs, while below them were temporary workers.10 European economic penetration of the region further deepened local divisions and exacerbated differences in wealth. The introduction of a market economy buttressed by European military force reduced the majority of the local population to pecuniary. A large percentage of Egyptian peasants and Algerian tribesmen had, by the end of the nineteenth century, been evicted from their land, becoming contract workers on the land or migrating to towns. 7

According to the sénatus consulte issued in 1863, in order to become French citizens Muslims would have to renounce their Muslim civil status and agree to live under French law, which would be tantamount to apostasy. John Ruedy described the sénatus consulte as “the cornerstone of a legal edifice that consigned Algerians to a status of permanent civil and political inferiority.” See John Ruedy, Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation (Bloomsbury: Indiana University Press, 1992), 75–76; See also Benjamin Stora, Histoire de l’Algérie colonial, 1830–1954 (Paris: La Découverte, 1991), 23; Pierre Vermeren, Maghreb: Les origines de la révolution démocratique (Paris: Pluriel, 2011), 75. 8 Perkins, Tunisia, 56–60; Ruedy, Modern Algeria, 90. 9 Lewis, Divided Rule, 143. 10 Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 40.

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The Egyptian fellahin, deprived of all rights, were completely dependent on contractors who, as moneylenders, kept them in debt peonage and could hire and fire them at will.11 By 1907, 37 per cent had become landless. In 1914, 92.6 per cent owned 5 acres or less. In Algeria mass-evictions from the land led to a decline in the Muslim population of 600,000 between 1861 and 1872. In times of economic crisis the indigenous population was the hardest hit. For example, during the crisis of the 1930s in Tunisia measures were taken to support wheat and wine growers while olive growers, the majority of Tunisians, were ­neglected.12 In Egypt per capita income declined by 10 per cent between 1913 and 1939, and the British embassy estimated that by the outbreak of the Second World War 93 per cent of the rural population was living “below the line of health and decency.”13 Attracted to the southern shores of the Mediterranean by the privileged colonial citizenship regime, the numbers of foreign citizens grew exponentially. In 1927 their numbers in Egypt had reached 220,000, of which the Jewish community numbered 75,000, the Greeks 76,000, and the Italians 51,000 (compared to 14 million Egyptians). In 1947 there were 130,000 French citizens in Tunisia (4 per cent of the population), while in Algeria 125,963 Europeans had settled as early as the end of the 1840s. A century later French citizens there had grown to number around a million, compared with around eight million Algerian Muslims. In Morocco the number of foreigners grew from 60,000 in 1918 to 162,000 in 1931 and 415,000 in 1951 (against 8.4 million Muslims and Jews). Many of these foreign communities, such as the Greeks in Egypt, were more interested in their own politics back home than in those of their country of residence.14 New, cosmopolitan cities arose and grew beyond recognition, including Casablanca, Tangier, Algiers, Tunis, Alexandria, Cairo, Beirut, and Smyrna. The most cosmopolitan of these cities had their own citizenship regimes. In the words of Reimer, “Extraterritoriality was the mechanism that did the most to advance European colonial domination in Alexandria.”15 Alexandria had its

11 Ibid., 25. 12 Perkins, Tunisia, 93. 13 Robert L. Tignor, State, Private Enterprise, and Economic Change in Egypt, 1918–1952 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 217. 14 Alexander Kitroeff, The Greeks in Egypt, 1919–1937: Ethnicity and Class (Oxford: Ithaca Press, 1989), 37–54. 15 Michael J. Reimer, Colonial Bridgehead: Government and Society in Alexandria, 1807–1882 (Cairo: The American University Press in Cairo, 1997), 87.

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own foreign-run municipality between 1867 and 1927.16 Tangier, as an international zone, was run by foreign consuls between 1923 and 1956.17 In most countries, foreign citizens owned the transport system (railways, tramways, shipping), banks and insurance companies, land development companies, local industries, building companies, real estate, import-and-export companies, department stores, the best schools, and exclusive clubs. In colonial cities, the health facilities, circulation of traffic, street planning, and building regulations imposed Western standards and notions of space and human interaction. Orientalism and the Divide between Citizen and Non-citizen Orientalism is most associated with Edward Said’s Orientalism and cultural stereotypes of Muslims characterised as “essentialist” in order to better exploit them, but perhaps more fundamentally it is related to European civilisation, concepts of civility, and citizenship. “Natives” were those who did not have a nationality and citizenship rights and, moreover, did not deserve them. That colonial regimes were aware of the tensions between European claims to the theory of universal rights versus colonial practice is clear from the following examples. The colon newspaper La Tunisie française criticised French administrators who believed that “Arabs are men like any others and ought to have the same rights equal to those of the French.” According to the paper, they failed to understand that “they constitute a race that a depressing religion and a long atavism of laziness and fatalism have rendered manifestly inferior.”18 Their status as “natives” was based on their total want of the qualities and responsibilities of citizens who have a “notion of time” and a “feeling of responsibility.”19 In Algeria the colons argued that the “relatively barbarous state” of Muslim society made Muslims unsuitable for “assimilation” and to become full French citizens. To underline their inferiority, they imposed the code de l’indigénat on the Muslim Algerians in 1863, which Ruedy calls a “humiliating regime of exception.” This code enumerated a list of thirty-three infractions that only applied to Muslims, and which included offences such as defaming the French Republic and failing to answer a French official.20 16

Robert Ilbert, “Une certain citadinité,” in Alexandrie 1860–1960: Un modèle éphémère de convivialité; communautés et identité cosmopolitie, ed. Robert Ilbert and Ilios Yannakakis (Paris: Éditions Autrement, 1992), 20–47. 17 Iain Finlayson, Tangier: City of the Dream, 3rd edition (London: Tauris Parke, 2015), 54. 18 Citation in Perkins, Tunisia, 66. 19 Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 41–42. 20 Ruedy, Modern Algeria, 89. For Egypt, Abdeslam M. Maghraoui states that “to become eligible for the ‘privilege’ of modern citizenship in a liberal society, the Egyptian individual had to be appropriated, transformed, controlled and alienated from his or her identity.”

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On the other hand, British colonial rule in Egypt introduced reforms that claimed to “humanise” the indigenous population, by abolishing the use of the whip on peasants, fixing tax rates, abolishing or rather regulating the corvée, monitoring the work of rural administrators, protecting prisoners, and reducing or “regulating” corporal punishments.21 But being “human” did not mean that the Arab non-elite were citizens. In both British and French colonies education was deliberately limited to prevent the local population from acquiring European notions of rights.22 The Colonial Alliance Yet colonial power in most countries was not absolute and its citizenship regime was also influenced by indigenous political forces, especially in colonies experiencing indirect British rule, or French and British protectorates, which affected the local citizenship regimes. In many cases this alliance was built on an agreement between an indigenous, often Westernised elite and the colonial power. In Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt, the colonial powers were dependent on these so-called “notables” (ʿayyan).23 What can be called the colonial alliance had several far-reaching consequences for local citizenship regimes. Firstly, the local elite often adopted the discourse of privileged citizenship that the colonial powers upheld and the idea that the indigenous people would have to be gradually educated in order to be able to become full citizens. Its leaders considered themselves as “those who have real interests” (ashab al-masalih al-haqiqiyya), and looked down on members of the mob (ghawghaʾ) who did not share their westernised culture See Abdeslam M. Maghraoui, Liberalism without Democracy: Nationhood and Citizenship in Egypt, 1922–1936 (Durham nc: Duke University Press, 2006), 53. 21 Samera Esmeir, Juridical Humanity: A Colonial History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 88–91, 117. 22 Stora, Histoire de l’Algérie, 98–99; Vermeren, Maghreb, 129–130. In Algeria French Arab schools were dismantled after 1870. Attempts to apply the compulsory primary education introduced in France in 1881 and 1882 were sabotaged by the colons. As a result, in 1890 only 1.9 per cent of indigenous children were enrolled in school. In 1945 200,000 children of colons went to school against 120,000 Algerian children, despite the Algerian population being seven times larger. In Morocco only 2 per cent of the children went to primary school in 1944, while in Tunisia it was 10 per cent. During the subsequent decade the figure increased to 13, 20, and 30 per cent in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia respectively. In Egypt in 1952, 75 per cent of the population was illiterate. 23 Albert Hourani, “Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,” in Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century, ed. William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 57, 64–68.

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and lifestyle.24 Secondly, it legitimated an elitist economic system that worked to the advantage of the indigenous elite, whether landowners or upcoming industrialists, who cooperated with the colonial powers;25 in Egypt, the alliance with the large landowners meant, for instance, that the rule of law and reform did not penetrate the private estates of the large landowners, which covered most of Egypt.26 Thirdly, it supported clientelist politics based on patronage and a segmented social system that further undermined an inclusive political entity;27 many political parties, especially the so-called “minority parties” in Egypt, were founded around “personalities” and their patronage and clientelist relations rather than issues and programmes.28 Fourthly, it upheld and further rooted a culture of patriarchy and a culture of hierarchy and deference that undermined notions of gender equality and rights.29 For example, in Morocco the French Resident Lyautey helped to build up the monarchy and the makhzen into its present form by trying to keep Morocco “traditional” and working through the urban elite and Berber tribal leaders.30 Minorities The introduction of colonial citizenship regimes would have its most devastating effect on religious and ethnic minorities who were caught up in the colonial game of exclusion – inclusion and divide-and-rule.31 However, not all members of the minorities decided to take the side of the colonial powers. In Egypt, for instance, numerous rich and powerful Jewish individuals, such as Joseph Aslan Cattaoui, played prominent roles in the Egyptian economy and were briefly supporters of the Wafd’s nationalist cause.32 24

Marius Deeb, Party Politics in Egypt: The Wafd and its Rivals, 1919–1939 (London: Ithaca Press, 1979), 184; Walid Kazziha, “The Jarid-Umma Group and Egyptian Politics,” Middle Eastern Studies 13 (1977): 373–385. 25 Tignor, State, 110. 26 Esmeir, Juridical Humanity, 201–202. 27 Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 50. 28 Deeb, Party Politics in Egypt, 78. 29 Hisham Sharaby, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). For more on patronage and clientalism in this volume, see Chapter 4 by Robert Springborg. 30 Gilson Miller, Modern Morocco, 90–102. 31 See, for example, Benjamin Thomas White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011). 32 Gudrun Krämer, The Jews in Modern Egypt, 1914–1952 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1989), 90–98.

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In the increasingly radical atmosphere of the 1930s a distinction appeared between minorities that had been “protected” and enjoyed privileges and those who sided with the nationalist movements for independence. Jews in Tunisia were on the “good” side of the line, and were supported by the Neo-Destour as “our brothers”33 because they had refused naturalisation and not become French citizens, while the Jewish community in Algeria was persecuted in 1897 in Oran and evicted after independence because it had become naturalised via the Crémieux decree in 1870.34 In Lebanon and Syria the anti-Christian revolts of 1860 was directed against Christians who were protected by the French.35 On the other hand, the Copts in Egypt were “good” because they had never allied with the British, who had used Syrian Orthodox and Armenian Christians instead.36 According to the French, the Kabyle Berbers could be assimilated at some point in time, unlike the barbarous Arabs.37 In Egypt, Jews were treated as full members of the nation with equal rights and duties if they supported the demand for independence, learned Arabic, and adapted to local customs.38 Nationalism as Counter-Citizenship To a large extent, the emergence of citizenship rights inaugurated modernism in the Middle East and North Africa. This could adopt an Islamic as well as a secular Westernised form, as long as the relations between state and subject radically changed and led to a new and modern citizenship regime. For instance, the crisis surrounding the legitimacy of the sultan in Morocco at the beginning of the twentieth century led to increased power for the ʿulama, who made their bayʿa (pledge of allegiance) in 1907 to the usurper ʿAbd al-Hafiz conditional on his abolition of various unpopular taxes and the eviction of foreigners, thereby turning the new relationship into an explicit “contract.”39 33 Perkins, Tunisia, 98. 34 Stora, Histoire de l’Algérie, 34. 35 Laila Taraza Fawaz, An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 36 B.L. Carter, The Copts in Egyptian Politics (London: Croom Helm, 1986), 58–79. Thomas Philipp, “Copts and Other Minorities in the Development of the Egyptian Nation-State,” in Egypt – From Monarchy to Republic, ed. Shimon Shamir, Boulder: Westview, 1995; Thomas Philipp, The Syrians in Egypt 1725–1975. Stuttgart: Berliner Islam Studien, 1985. 37 Ruedy, Modern Algeria, 91. 38 Krämer, The Jews in Modern Egypt, 128. 39 For more on this event, of which there must have been many more, see of Gilson Miller, Modern Morocco, 77–78, 80, and C.R. Pennell, Morocco since 1830: A History (New York: New York University Press, 2000).

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The establishment of an Arabic press at the end of the nineteenth century certainly helped to put one of the elements in place for conceptualisation and articulation of indigenous notions of citizenship and active participation by creating a public opinion and a discourse of rights to information. The “imagined community” was a precondition for the emergence of a notion of a shared and equal citizenship with non-kinsmen or adherents of other religions.40 The notions of unity (wahda) and nation (watan), particularly, derived from European nationalism. In Algeria in the decade before World War i the Young Algerian movement was the first generation “demanding rights in the name of the values and principles they had learned from French schools.”41 They began to speak the language of rights and at first limited themselves to status, demanding complete equal civil rights. But the demands rapidly extended to political, social, and economic rights. In 1927 Young Algerians demanded equal pay for equal work, indigenous representation in parliament, and the abolition of the hated indigénat.42 They protested against their status as “secondary citizens” (citoyens mineurs). Over the next decade demands for rights were extended by Etoile Nord-Africaine and the Parti du Peuple Algérien (ppa) to encompass freedom of the press and of association, and the election of an Algerian parliament by universal suffrage, the nationalisation of banks, irrigation projects for peasants, and, when all colonial reforms remained limited, complete independence.43 In Tunisia, French public schools educated a generation of Francophone intellectuals in the ideals of the French Revolution and notions of citoyenneté.44 In response to the colonial dual society and its attempt to split the nation by including the local elites, radical nationalists stressed national unity and communal, collective rights at the expense of individual ones. The Wafd claimed to express the “will” (gharba) of the people,45 the Neo-Destour presented itself as “the party of the whole nation and the emanation of its desires and its will,”46 while the Kutla used terms such as the “people” (shaʿb) and nation (umma), which included all Moroccans, Jews as well as Muslims.47 The same trend was also discernible within Islamic reformist movements; the Muslim 40

Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 41 Reudy, Modern Algeria, 106–107. 42 Ibid., 132. 43 Stora, Histoire Algérien coloniale, 79; Ruedy, Modern Algeria, 137. 44 Perkins, Tunisia, 63–64. 45 Deeb, Party Politics in Egypt, 62–75. 46 Perkins, Tunisia, 97. 47 Gilson Miller, Modern Morocco, 130–135.

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Brotherhood, the Algerian reformists, and, in the beginning, Salafis were all focused on unifying Muslims against a foreign domination based on division.48 Trade Unions and Social Rights Trade unions played an important role in the transformation of the colonial citizenship regime through their promotion of social and economic rights. At first they were dominated by Europeans, but in the 1920s and 1930s, with the expansion of the colonial economy and manufacturing, local workers took over.49 Unsurprisingly, some of the early demands of these workers were to be treated with dignity and respect and to obtain the right to defend themselves against management charges.50 Much of this was still in the language of patronage, national unity, and harmony between classes, but gradually, as the nationalist movement radicalised and the workers’ movement grew more independent and larger groups were mobilised, the concept of citizenship also evolved as an independent category. In 1941 al-Nahar published an article that stated: “We as workers do not lack knowledge or experience, and we have already spent half our lives caring for this movement. So we must be men and defend our cause ourselves, without the need of the intervention of patrons (awsiyaʾ) who raise themselves upon our shoulders and are not of us.”51 As a mark of growing inclusion, a Ministry of Social Affairs was founded, publishing statistics on wages and working hours, housing conditions, and nutrition, and addressing the “labour question.”52 In 1942 trade unions in Egypt were legalised but regulated, yet as government employees increased so did their “bargaining power” too. In Tunisia the Confédération Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens (cgtt) was founded in 1924 to demand equal rights with French and Italian workers.53 This was replaced by the Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens (ugtt) in 1946, giving a social and economic slant to the nationalist movement led by the Neo-Destour. During the repression of political parties in 1951 the ugtt was the main force capable of mobilising mass protests against the French repression.54 48

Henri Lauzière calls these reformers “Islamic nationalists.” Henri Lauzière, The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 100–101. 49 Gilson Miller, Modern Morocco, 116–117. 50 Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 59, 65, 74. 51 Ibid., 239. 52 Ibid., 269–271. 53 Perkins, Tunisia, 85. 54 Ibid., 124.

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Inclusive and Exclusive Citizenship Despite these shortcomings of citizenship, important trends emerged within the region in support of an inclusive and egalitarian citizenship. The Egyptian Communist movement, based on the influence of the Popular Front strategy, essentially supported a programme that promised an inclusionary citizenship covering civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights without ethnic distinctions.55 In Egypt in 1945 the Preparatory Committee published its programme, calling for the legalisation of trade union federations, a forty-hour week, a weekly day off, comprehensive social insurance, and the recognition of the right to strike.56 These demands were adopted during the huge 1946 uprising by the National Committee of Workers and Students. The same was true of the Communist Party of Iraq (cpi), which, in its National Charter of 1945, launched a mild social-democratic programme aimed at enhancing citizenship and rights.57 Very much the same democratic reformist ideas were held in Egypt by the socalled Wafdist Vanguard (al-Taliʿa al-Wafdiyya), a young generation of Wafdists who were in favour of social reform and who were influenced by European social-democratic ideas.58 Butrus Ghali’s Society of National Reform and the Society of National Renaissance also belonged to this group,59 as did Messali Hajj’s Parti du Peuple Algérien in Algeria, the Istiqlal Party in Morocco, the liberal wing of the Neo-Destour in Tunisia, and the al-Ahali group in Iraq. The latter founded the Popular Reform Association, which promoted social reform, greater democracy, progressive income tax, the legalisation of trade unions, and a minimum wage, and which was in favour of national development and the creation of an Iraqi identity.60 Similarly, in Morocco, the Plan de réformes, a 134 page document, presented an inclusive citizenship programme, one that included freedom of the press, compulsory primary education, decentralisation, workers’ rights, unemployed- and pension rights, and a standard school curriculum for the whole country.61 55

Roel Meijer, The Quest for Modernity: Secular Liberal and Left-Wing Political Thought in Egypt, 1945–1958 (London: Routledge, 2002), 96–132. 56 Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 331–332. 57 Tripp, Iraq, 115. Tareq Y. Ismael, The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 24–34. 58 Kirk J. Beattie, Egypt during the Nasser Years: Ideology, Politics and Civil Society (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 25. 59 Meijer, The Quest for Modernity, 37–65. 60 Tripp, Iraq, 84–85, 90–91. 61 Gilson Miller, Modern Morocco, 133.

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The Islamist movement also showed signs of adopting a discourse of rights. Despite its ambiguous attitude towards strikes and the strong influence of clientelism and patronage, even parts of the Muslim Brotherhood adopted a discourse of citizenship.62 The Moroccan leader of the Istiqlal Party, Allal alFasi, who is considered in “enlightened Salafi,” produced the Plan de réforme.63 Many individual thinkers, such as Sayyid Qutb and Khalid Muhammad Khalid, both Egyptians, were affected by the dominant discourse of rights and social justice of that time. However, the nationalist frame in which citizenship was cast turned it into a zero-sum game with the stricter boundaries between insiders and outsiders. The increase in sovereignty for the Arab countries was accompanied by an increasingly narrow definition of who was a real citizen. Identity politics, such an important part of the inclusion – exclusion equation, supported by various conservative forces, would impede and deflect the drive for an inclusionary, equal citizenship regime. Furthermore, the introduction of nationalism into a multi-ethnic and multi-religious environment such as the Middle East would have disastrous consequences for the citizenship regimes of the Ottoman successor states. The plight of Greeks and Armenians in Turkey during and just after World War i, the Assyrians in Iraq in the 1930s, and the Palestinians in Palestine, would show the devastation that nationalism could wreak on the region. Nationalism worked at the expense of foreigners and “foreign” minorities, many of whom had lived in the region for generations. Legal, political, ideological, and cultural exclusion and closure replaced the openness, tolerance, and diffuse notions of belonging and identity that had prevailed previously. The authoritarian bargain, much like Communism in Eastern Europe, would deepen differences and exclusion rather than promote inclusion and equality.

The Authoritarian Bargain

Social Contracts The notion that a social contract was established between state and society after independence is much more widely accepted than it is for the colonial period.64 In citizenship terms, according to this deal the state acquires political 62 Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 391. 63 Lauzière, The Origins of Salafism, 133. 64 The term of this agreement has been differently defined: The term “social contract” is widely employed and has been used by: Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “Civil Society and Prospects

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power and demands political allegiance, while in exchange the population receives from the state jobs, education, housing, pensions, and food and petrol subsidies, and can expect the state to ensure social justice, foster economic development, maintain the national identity, and protect national interests. Certainly, each social contract in each country was influenced by the previous citizen regime and the totality of influences which impinge upon it. There are, however, general trends discernible in the region. The main division is between republics and monarchies. The monarchies in Egypt (1923–52), Iraq (1922–58), Tunisia (the bey was deposed in 1956), and Libya (King Idris was deposed in 1970) were toppled and replaced by republics because they were unable to meet the specific combination of political, social, and economic rights promoted by the nationalist movement during the 1930s and 1940s, which had required reforms only a sovereign state could implement. The new populist authoritarian states in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt were internally supported by coalitions of reformers and the beneficiaries of reform, while they were politically and economically supported by the Soviet Union. The surviving monarchies, in Morocco, Jordan, and the Gulf states, were able to weather the storm by upholding the semi-colonial bargain with the landed and tribal elite and of Democratization in the Arab World,” in Civil Society in the Middle East, ed. Augustus Richard Norton (Leiden: Brill, 1995) 37–38; Dirk Vandewalle, Libya since Independence: Oil and State-Building (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), 23–30; John Waterbury, “From Social Contract to Extraction Contracts: The Political Economy of Authoritarianism and Democracy,” in Islam, Democracy, and the State in North Africa, ed. John P. Entelis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 141–176. Others have called it a “populist authoritarian bargain”; cf., for example, Rex Brynen et al., Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democracy in the Arab World (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2012), 149. It has also been called a “national-populist social pact” by Steven Heydemann, “Social Pacts and the Persistence of Authoritarianism in the Middle East,” in Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes, ed. Oliver Schlumberger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 21–38; an “authoritarian bargain,” in Steven Heydemann, Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World (Analysis Paper No. 13, The Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, October 2007); a “ruling bargain” by Mehran Kamrava, The Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 363–365; and, more ironically, a “social contract of sorts” by Salwa Ismail, “Authoritarian Government, Neoliberalism and Everyday Civilities in Egypt,” Third World Quarterly 32 (2011): 847. Others are even less charitable and call it a “bribe” of society: Hazem Kandil, Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen: Egypt’s Road to Revolt (London: Verso, 2012), 64. Marsha Posusney has called the contract with the trade unions “a set of reciprocal rights” based on a “moral economy,” Marsha Pripstein Posusney, Labor and the State in Egypt: Workers, Unions, and Economic Restructuring (New York: University of Columbia Press, 1999), 2.

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maintaining relations with France or replacing Great Britain with the United States. They were further supported by conservative religious groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafi ʿulama in Saudi Arabia. In Egypt a major part of the populist authoritarian bargain was put in place after the military coup of the Free Officers in July 1952, when they succeeded in winning the support of a large section of the trade unions. On December 8, 1952 the government enacted a comprehensive new labour law increasing their severance compensation, and providing longer annual leave, free transportation to the factories, the right to appeal the dismissal of workers, and, most importantly of all, job security. In exchange the workers had to accept the ban on strikes and recognise the new regime.65 Other measures cementing the authoritarian bargain soon followed, such as the inclusion of trade union members into Liberation Rally,66 the land reform of September 9, 1952, and the banning of political parties in January 1953.67 This enabled the military to mobilise the Transport Workers’ Union against the opposition that was demanding a return to the parliamentary system during the “March Crisis” of 1954.68 In Tunisia, the trade union-state bargain was made earlier, just before independence, when the Neo-Destour accepted the social and economic demands of the ugtt at a national party congress in 1955.69 After independence, however, the ugtt became subjugated to the Neo-Destour, its leader Ahmad Ben Salah was forced to resign, and in the new constitution social and economic rights were hardly mentioned, let alone the right of workers to strike.70 Throughout the heyday of Bourguiba the ugtt was subordinated to the demands of the state, many of whose cadres and leaders, such as Habib Achour and Ahmad ben Salah, were also members of the Neo-Destour and became ministers.71 As part of the bargain huge investments were made in Tunisia in the areas of education, health care, water, and roads, and between 1961 and 1969 the percentage of the population living below the poverty line declined from 70–75 to 40–45 per cent.72 65 Posusney, Labor and the State in Egypt, 2. 66 Beattie, Egypt during the Nasser Years, 80. 67 Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 432–447. 68 Beattie, Egypt during the Nasser Years, 96. The demonstrators demonstrated against a return to hizbiyya (partyism) and in favour of keeping the achievements of the revolution. 69 Perkins, Tunisia, 128. 70 Ibid., 134. 71 Michel Camau and Vincent Geisser, Le syndrome autoritaire: Politique en Tunisie de Bourguiba à Ben Ali (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2003), 145–147, 168, 171, 174. 72 Christopher Alexander, Tunisia: Stability and Reform in the Modern Maghreb (London: Routledge, 2010), 73–74.

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In Iraq, after the revolution of 1958 a similar social contract was implemented, although not directly with the trade unions. The special status of tribal lands was ended, taxes were imposed on tribal shaykhs, land reforms implemented, and areas of land were redistributed to landless peasants. The slums of Baghdad were cleaned up and housing projects initiated. Hospitals were also built, and the number of students in primary and secondary education doubled between 1958 and 1963.73 The social contract also extended to women: in Tunisia the Personal Status Law, which drastically changed the position of women, was passed in 1956, while in Iraq in 1959 women were accepted as being equal to men in terms of inheritance law and as witnesses in court. In all these cases, women became the concern of the state and consequently “state feminism” arose.74 These social contracts of the new nations were often formalised and laid down in so-called National Charters. The first was the 1962 National Charter (al-Mithaq al-Watani) of Egypt. In Algeria under Boumedienne a National Charter was adopted in 1976 and accepted by the population in a national referendum. These charters were extended even after the authoritarian bargain had crumbled; Ben Ali of Tunisia drew up a National Pact in 1987, while King Hussein of Jordan did so in 1991. Neither of these, however, was democratically adopted after a broad national discussion, nor were they substantial, enduring, or widely supported. In the monarchies such deals were less well defined, more diffuse and informal, and often more arbitrary and erratic. They were based on much more flexible arrangements, such as patronage, patriarchy, and religious charity, and legitimised by symbolic acts and religious institutions and ideologies. Whereas in the republics the “people” were, in theory, sovereign, in the monarchies the monarch still ruled supreme and in principle was answerable only to God. Subjects had no rights but obtained their status, livelihood, and state services as “gifts” (makrama) from the rulers, and were thus dependent on their benevolence. The public sector expanded as much as in the republics, but public sector employment was never a right. Moreover, the monarchies were saved from popular vengeance by the oil boom of the 1970s, which enabled them to insert much more extensive and far-reaching authoritarian bargains than the poverty-stricken republics. They also benefited from the collapse of Arab socialism, and the rise of conservative Islamism. 73 74

Adeed Dawisha, Iraq: A Political History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 181. Valentine M. Moghadam, Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2013), 37–75. For Egypt in this period, see especially Laura Bier, Revolutionary Womanhood: Feminism, Modernity and the State in Nasser’s Egypt (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2011).

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Corporatism A major drawback of corporatism was that political rights were not based on a positive view of democracy, which almost everywhere was associated with colonialism, disunity, and the rule of the elite.75 Class differences were denied and the nation was built on social harmony. People were one and undivided, and if there were differences they should be neglected, obfuscated, or repressed. Because the parliamentary system had not led to independence and reform, but had instead become associated with corruption and divisiveness, it was denounced as “partyism” or partisanship (hizbiyya) by many organisations that focused on social, communal, and national rights, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, radical nationalists such as the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, the NeoDestour in Tunisia, and Young Egypt, later the Socialist Party, and trade unions, as well as by the communist movement after 1959. All claimed to represent the nation, the people. This was the case with the Wafd, the Neo-Destour,76 the Front Libération National (fln), and even the Muslim Brotherhood.77 In the new corporatist state the differences within the nationalist movement or the various organisations were papered over or repressed. The National Liberation Rally of December 1952 in Egypt began with the discourse that would become wedded to the new dictatorships: “We are all of the Liberation Rally.”78 The Arab Socialist Union (asu), established in 1961, maintained that “in the absence of a basic contradiction between interests of the people’s productive forces, there is no need for each of them to form an independent political organization.”79 The Syrian Baʿath Party was there to “to protect the Arab nation from factionalism, backwardness and corruption.”80 Corporatism also led to a grading and categorisation of citizens according to state concepts. The new citizens did not have rights as individual citizens but became peasants, workers, or members of professions, such as engineers, teachers, judges, and journalists. Insofar as civil society had existed before the revolutions, it became incorporated and included into the state corporatism as entities.81 75 76 77

Camau and Geisser, Le syndrome autoritaire, 145. Ibid., 227–228. Roel Meijer, “The Muslim Brotherhood and the Political: An Exercise in Ambiguity.” In The Muslim Brotherhood in Europe, ed. Roel Meijer and Edwin Bakker (London: Hurst, 2013), 295–320. 78 Beattie, Egypt during the Nasser Years, 80. 79 Kandil, Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen, 57. 80 Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 42. 81 Robert Bianchi, Unruly corporatism: Associational Life in Twentieth-Century Egypt (New York: Oxford University Press,1989), 72–81.

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Corporatism could not have flourished to such an extent if it had not controlled such a huge chunk of the economy after the nationalisation of, first, foreign investments and, later, indigenous capital, which formed the basis of the huge public sector in the Arab world. The Middle East and North Africa had seen one of the largest foreign financial investments in the world and their nationalisation meant that the state would acquire the same central function as it had in the Soviet Bloc and would create monopoly companies across all sectors of the economy. The most spectacular change was in Egypt, where Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company and all British and French assets in transport, banks, public utilities, industries, and land companies during the Suez Crisis. In 1962 a second wave of nationalisation occurred, which included Egyptian enterprises and the press.82 In Algeria oil and gas was nationalised in 1968, and in Iraq banks, insurance companies, and “primary” industries were taken over by the state in 1964. In countries that did not have industrial a­ ssets, such as Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria, the land of the colons was sequestered after independence. Most economists agree that these measures were not economically rational decisions, but were politically motivated to increase governmental control and shore up the social pact.83 In Syria land reform and the  nationalisation of industries were seen as a “political necessity” to gain the loyalty of peasants and workers, and to obtain control over them.84 By 1985 140,000 Syrian workers were employed in public industrial sector, almost 40 per cent of the total industrial workforce. In Egypt the public sector expanded from 770,000 in 1962 to 1.1 million in 1967, while, in 1990, Syria counted 700,000 in state employment, five times the figure of 1970. Planning and Social Engineering Corporatism and its denial of conflict and politics is usually regarded as the bane of populist authoritarian republican regimes,85 but the planning and ideology that went with it, social engineering, perhaps had an even worse effect on citizenship and democratic rights. In almost all Arab countries new planning institutions were established and five year plans were implemented after 82

John Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 57–82. 83 Lahouari Addi, L’Algérie et la démocratie: Pouvoir et crise du politique dans l’Algérie contemporaine (Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 1995), 77; Volker Perthes, The Political Economy of Syria under Asad (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995), 145; Alan Richard and John Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East (Boulder: WestView Press, 1996), 173–204. 84 Perthes, The Political Economy of Syria, 39, 44. 85 Bianchi, Unruly Corporatism.

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large-scale nationalisation had taken place. It led to the rise of a new breed of people, such as Rashid al-Barrawi, who was an economic advisor to Nasser, and who founded the Egyptian Industrial Bank in 1953 and promoted such planning through his books and the propaganda he placed in the newspapers.86 He was succeeded by the much more famous ʿAziz Sidqi, the “industrial czar” of Egyptian industrialisation. But they emerged elsewhere as well. Hedi Nouiri, the Director of the Central Bank of Tunisia, and Ahmed ben Salah, who became Minister of Planning in 1961, are similar figures.87 In Egypt they were responsible for Tahrir province, the industrialisation “drive,” and the High Dam. But it was not just planning itself in the technical sense, or even technocracy as a technic of management. The Arabic words for “planning” (tarshid, tawjih, and, especially, takhtit) are closely related to terms such as “organisation” (tanzim), “supervision” (ishraf), “control” (raqaba), and “coordination” (tansiq), and represented an ideology of modernisation, a vision that enthralled not just intellectuals but one that was part and parcel of an ideology that promoted the state as an agent of change. Planning represented “high” modernism in the region, and had a crucial effect on the citizenship regime of the period.88 If the liberals of the 1920s looked at the Middle East through Western Orientalist eyes and downgraded the indigenous culture as an “uncivilised” one that could be gradually educated, the planners and the many communists, who imbibed planning through the Soviet Union, looked at society as “irrational,” a tabula rasa that could be planned once the state was captured from colonialism. Opposed to the “people with real interests” (ashab al-masalih al-haqiqiya), they were the “people of opinion” (ahl al-raʾy), the intellectuals, who could not just talk about gradual reform but could also implement it via “scientific planning” (al-takhtit al-ʿilmi), achieved through the modern state they came to control after independence.89 Personalisation of Power and Populism The result was the worst of both worlds. Planning was imposed from above, unrestrained by civil society or any intermediate professional organisations or institutions. This led to a paradoxical development: on the one hand, the state became the embodiment of the nation. It was the state that stood at the pinnacle of power and that needed protection. The police, the judiciary, and 86 For an analysis of the ideology of planning, see Meijer, The Quest for Modernity, 178–185. 87 Perkins, Tunisia, 146–147; Alexander, Tunisia, 42–43. 88 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 89 Meijer, The Quest for Modernity, 178–186, 208–245.

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the military were all in the service of the state, not the citizen.90 A typical example comes from after the military coup in Algeria in 1992, when the military established the Haut Comité d’Etat (hce), a five-man council to protect the state which was “under siege.”91 In the end the state, simply called le pouvoir, became an end in itself.92 On the other hand, the new leaders took over the task from the previous mass movements of representing the nation. Power was concentrated in their hands. The only task of the national assembly in independent Algeria was to ratify Ben Bella’s decisions, and the fln had no autonomous role. Likewise, the Neo-Destour was subsumed under Bourguiba’s rule, who personally appointed its politburo. In Egypt, Nasser increasingly concentrated power over the security apparatus, the media, and all executive agencies into his own hands, at the expense of the collective rule of the Revolutionary Command Council (rcc), following the March Crisis of 1954, and dissolved the rcc in August 1955.93 Attempts made in 1957 by the Egyptian parliament to show its teeth and investigate corruption charges were immediately suppressed, and it was dissolved in 1958 upon the creation of the United Arab Republic, which joined Egypt with Syria, and when it reconvened in 1960 all 400 members were appointed by Nasser.94 Even the mildest forms of opposition and criticism were associated with conspiracies, disunity, and subversion.95 In all these countries, participation was limited to the “support of the goals, the norms, and values the elite disseminated.”96 The charisma of the first leaders of the struggle for independence, Bourguiba in Tunisia (1988), Ben Bella (1962–65) in Algeria, and Nasser in Egypt (1970), was given so much scope that they absorbed the rights of the people. In the words of Michael Willis, Bourguiba sought to convey the impression that he “embodied Tunisia himself.”97 Under his leadership the state took over the colonial task of educating the population and adopted the mission educatrice from the French. Bourguiba became the al-mujahid al-akbar (le combattant 90 Christopher, Tunisia, 41. 91 James D. Le Sueur, Between Terror and Democracy: Algeria since 1989 (London: Zed Books), 51–55. 92 Addi, L’Algérie et la démocratie, 35. 93 Beattie, Egypt during the Nasser Years, 120, 123. 94 Ibid., 133. 95 Camau and Geisser, Le syndrome autoritaire, 149, 156. 96 Ibid., 155–158. 97 Michael J. Willis, Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring (London: Hurst, 2012), 51.

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suprême).98 Leaders claimed to speak in the name of the people (al-sha ʿb) or to be the “delegates of the revolution,” although, at the same time, they deeply distrusted the people, whom they thought should be guided, educated, and led, but not consulted, let alone be allowed to exert influence on the direction of state affairs.99 In Iraq, after the toppling of the monarchy in 1958, ʿAbd al-Karim Qasim became the “sole leader” and the “beloved saviour,” starting a long tradition of personal dictatorship.100 This tendency to become the embodiment of the nation degenerated into rulers regarding the nation as a family. Bourguiba regarded the Tunisian people as his “children.”101 Under Arab socialism in Egypt the state “was to play the role of the rab al-bayt (master of the house) and the people that of the subordinate wife or dependent children.”102 Sadat regarded the nation as one family, and Wedeen describes the Syrian subject under Hafez al-Asad as a “child citizen.”103 In this construct, males were sons of the “mother-nation, and all citizens were sons and daughters of Asad as the patriarch of the nation to whom they owed obedience.”104 In an attempt to erase the notion of individual citizens, leader and citizens were conflated into one, leaving the latter without personality or rights: “They should know that Asad is no one, but one of you. Every citizen in this country is Hafiz al-Asad.”105 In the case of Iraq, Kanan Makiya writes, “the whole apparatus of the state is united in regarding the citizen as an outsider placed at the very bottom of the heap.”106 With the personalisation of politics and the prominence of personal loyalty followed the building of vast patronage systems, which further undermined the modernist project and introduced a new privileged social class and a new form of “differentiated citizenship” that replaced the colonial one. ʿAbd al-Hakim ʿAmer, Nasser’s Minister of Defence, “transform[ed] the army into a tribe,” with him as tribal chief. He raised salaries, lowered the retirement age, allocated summer houses, cars, and interest-free loans to his men, who were beholden

98 Perkins, Tunisia, 130–131. 99 Camau and Geisser, Le syndrome autoritaire, 149; Beattie, Egypt during the Nasser Years, 124. 100 Dawisha, Iraq, 177–179, 190. 101 Perkins, Tunisia, 130–131. 102 Bier, Revolutionary Womenhood, 58. 103 Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination, 51. 104 Ibid. 105 Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination, 17. 106 Samir al-Khalil (Kanan Makiya), Republic of Fear: The Inside Story of Saddam’s Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), 43.

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to him alone.107 In Syria, military personnel had access to subsidised housing, cars, food, special limousines, clubs, and economies, as well as to resources; their pay was higher than civil servants, and they paid no income tax.108 With the increasing personalisation of politics, there was a decline in playing-off factions and personalities against each other and in preventing them from turning themselves into representatives of interests and from formulating programs and presenting issues for open discussion.109 Depoliticisation and demobilisation were part of this strategy and were, in the end, successful everywhere. Cultural Boundaries The fact that post-independence politics was based on ethnos rather than on demos and on individual rights further undermined a sense of individual citizenship, as rights were also subordinated to exclusive communitarian interests as defined by the state and imposed from above.110 In Tunisia the Arab-Islamic culture was adopted as the cultural foundation of the new country.111 Cultural differences were eliminated and in the new, totalising Tunisian identity, or “personnalité,” there was no room for non-Muslim groups.112 As a result all references to Amazigh (Berbers) were suppressed and local dialects were neglected. Whole regions, such as Kabyle in Algeria and the Rif in Morocco, were ignored by the government. Berber activists and opponents were detained, one of whom was Hocine Aït Ahmed, who was arrested and subsequently condemned to death for founding a Berber party.113 After ʿAbd al-Karim Qasim’s Iraqi initial strategy, based on expounding the unity of “brotherly nationalities,” the Baʿath returned to pan-Arab unity and exclusion. The Politics of Exclusion and Elimination Exclusion was cultural and ethnic, but also political and economic. Opponents were created to be stigmatised, the past was erased, and new society created. Foreigners left the country. Between 1955 and 1959, 170,000 Europeans left Tunisia, two-thirds of the foreign population.114 In Egypt, the expat community 107 Kandil, Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen, 51. 108 Perthes, The Political Economy of Syria, 150. 109 Alexander, Tunisia, 40, 51. 110 Addi, L’Algérie et la démocratie, 100–101. 111 Camau and Geisser, Le syndrome autoritaire, 99, 108–109, 144, 149. 112 Norma Salem, Habib Bourguiba, Islam, and the Creation of Tunisia (London: Croom Helm, 1984), 146. 113 Le Sueur, Between Terror and Democracy, 16. 114 Perkins, Tunisia, 144.

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declined from 204,000 to 143,000 between 1947 and 1960.115 In Egypt, Syria, and Iraq all foreigners had gone by 1960. The majority of the Jews also left these countries. Forced migration was common, such as the 40,000 Shiʿi or Fayli Kurds in 1971–1972, and the 200,000 “Persian” Shiʿis from Iraq in 1980s, who were evicted to Iran. In Egypt, the “purification” of politics from “corrupt politicians,” “feudalists,” and “monopoly capital,” which was to involve the arrest of 64 leading politicians in September 1952, the abrogation of the constitution in December, and the instalment of the “treason court,” was one of the means for legitimising the road to dictatorship.116 On October 22, 1961 the property of 167 “reactionary capitalists” was sequestered. “Political isolation,” or the withdrawal of all political rights, was extended to another 600 people. Waterbury reckons that, in total, some 7,000 persons were affected by land reforms, nationalisations, or political crimes, and consequently deprived of their political rights.117 Nationalisations carried out in Syria in 1964 were means to punish “bad citizens”;118 between 1963 and 1969 4,500 landowners whose land exceeded 1,200 hectares were stripped of 1.5 million hectares between them.119 Members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood were called “reactionaries,” “rightists,” and “vermin” who were threatening to “contaminate” the body politic of the regime.120 After the banishment of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in 1954, as many as 20,000 of its members were detained and remained in prison until the start of the 1970s.121 Civil society was brought to heel. In 1980 the lawyers’, engineers’ and physicians’ syndicates were forced to resign and more regime-friendly members installed.122 As politics was seen as a zero-sum game, violence became widespread. The degree of repression was staggering. Mass killings became common in the Iraqi republic, starting with the mass killings in Mosul and Kirkuk in 1958 and the killing of thousands of communists after the Baʿath coup in 1963, and reaching its height with the Anfal operations against the Kurds in 1987–88. In Morocco the “years of lead” lasted from 1978 to 1992 and cost 60,000 people their lives, Egypt experienced a police state from 1954 to 1970, the Iraqi “republic of fear” 115 Beattie, Egypt during the Nasser Years, 117. 116 Ibid., 76–79. 117 Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat, 75. 118 Volker Perthes, The Political Economy of Syria under Asad (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995), 39. 119 Ibid., 81. 120 Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination, 44. 121 Hazem Kandil, Soldiers, Spies, and Statemen: Egypt’s Road to Revolt (London: Verso, 2012), 40, 44. 122 Perthes, The Political Economy of Syria, 137.

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lasted from the 1964 until the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003,123 and, between 1962 and 1991, Algeria went through “the dark years” (les années noires) of state violence, which resulted in 100,000 deaths.124 Another 150,000 would be killed in the subsequent civil war of the 1990s. Even Tunisia, which was never militarised, had a history of violence, during the ferghala uprisings of 1954–56. All forms of protest were repressed with extreme violence. The general strike of the ugtt in Tunisia in January 1978 was repressed at the cost of 200 lives and its secretary general was condemned to ten years in prison, while the “bread riot” of 1984 was suppressed with 143 dead. The uprisings in Algeria in 1988 were suppressed at the cost of 500 lives. Republics versus Monarchies That the monarchies emerged in the post-independence era stronger than the republics is not surprising. The failure of the modernist project of rationalisation was because it was not based on citizenship rights. The forces working against the emergence of rights following independence were immense: technocracy and the ideology of planning regarded people as tools in the modernisation process; the personalisation and concentration of power in the hands of the political leaders and their treatment of citizens as children absorbed their rights on the one hand, while the infiltration and expansion of patronage and clientalism undermined them on the other; de-politicisation and demobilisation weakened any form of opposition, while the deepening and normalisation of the mechanisms of exclusion and repression strengthened the culture of obedience. While the monarchies also had all of these aspects they were much more flexible, and through their ideology of makrama could give greater legitimacy to the vast patronage systems that they controlled.

The Arab Uprisings and the Re-emergence of Citizenship

The Collapse of the Authoritarian Social Contract It was the unravelling of the authoritarian bargain on the one hand and the provocation of the Arab Gulf States’ wealth on the other that led to the Arab Uprisings. It was not democracy as such,125 nor only social rights, let alone political Islam, in the sense of building an Islamic state, that was at the root of the uprisings. Outrage at the complete denial both of people’s basic humanity 123 al-Khalil, Republic of Fear. 124 Vermeren, Maghreb, 178. 125 One should differentiate between liberal democracy and democracy in the Middle East; very few people are actually in favour of a liberal democracy.

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and of their civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights, all deepened by crony capitalism, the self-enrichment of the elite, rampant corruption, and constant harassment by the security forces, brought down the “wall of fear” and caused people to rise up against the existing citizenship regime, especially in the republics. As these were not directed at a foreign enemy, nor against internal religious or ethnic scapegoats, but were aimed at the basic political issue of citizen-state and citizen-citizen relations, it touched upon the very heart of citizenship in all its existential aspects. The Arab Uprisings can therefore be regarded as a struggle for a new social contract. However vague at the beginning, they were inclusionary, egalitarian, and non-sectarian. The economic unravelling of the authoritarian bargain has been extensively analysed by others and should not detain us here.126 Its main characteristics are a gradual dismantling of the welfare state that had been built after independence, achieved through austerity measures, the privatisation of public companies, a significant increase in the size of the informal economy, and insecure working conditions. Many mark the beginning of the unravelling of the authoritarian bargain as the time of the “bread riots” of the 1970s and 1980s in Tunisia (1978, 1984), Egypt (1977), Morocco (1981, 1984), Algeria (1988), and Jordan (1989).127 Algeria signed its first “standby agreement” in 1989, agreeing with the imf to end subsidies on bread and milk in 1991, and in 1995 started its privatisation programs.128 Syria had gone through an “infitah of abundance” in the 1970s and a “infitah of public poverty” in the 1980s.129 Raising prices meant the end of the “acquired rights” of a certain level of consumption, housing, employment, and dignity.130 The crisis was deepened because, more than elsewhere, the social dimension in the republics had been at the heart of the authoritarian bargain. A New Social Contract Researchers have been describing the developments that led to the dismantling of the authoritarian bargain for decades. These take several forms: Ideological developments. Ideologically, notions of citizenship have emerged across the political spectrum, from Islamists to the liberal left, since the “utopias” 126 See, for example, Eberhard Kienle, A Grand Delusion: Democracy and Economic Reform in Egypt (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001); Ray Bush and Habib Ayeb, Marginality and Exclusion in Egypt (London: Zed Books, 2012); Adam Hanieh, Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2013). 127 Camau and Geisser, Le syndrome autoritaire, 184–185. 128 Le Sueur, Between Terror and Democracy, 101. 129 Perthes, The Political Economy of Syria, 66. 130 Camau and Geisser, Le syndrome autoritaire, 188.

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of both the Islamic state and the Arab socialist state have become less attractive. What further enhanced this trend was the high level of state repression and that led to demands for the rule of law, an independent judiciary, and the separation of powers. So-called “post-Islamism,” described as a change from duties to rights, is in many ways a “turn” towards citizenship:131 (1) it is a move away from the project of Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, which promoted Islam as a communitarian system covering all aspects of life, towards a normative system of ethical guidelines.132 (2) A willingness among such trends as the Wasatiyya to recognise difference, pluralism, and the acceptance of the legal equality of non-Muslims with Muslims. (3) The recognition of politics as a separate field of activity from religion, a space where citizens can make compromises to reach pragmatic solutions to daily political issues and coalitions can reach their goals,133 a process that has often been subsumed under the notion of “political learning.”134 (4) The separation of political parties from social movements that are assumed to be ideologically more rigid and constraining in the formation of political compromises.135 (5) The acceptance of a “civil state” (dawla madaniyya) instead of an Islamic state (dawla islamiyya) and of civility as an attitude, a new interest in constitutions as a form of social contract, and shared citizenship as the basis of the state.136 These trends are discernible in the Muslim Brotherhood,137 the Parti 131 Asef Bayat has called post-Islamism a change from duties to rights; Asef Bayat, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007); Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994); Rachel Scott, The Challenge of Political Islam: Non-Muslims and the Egyptian State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). 132 See Chapter 12 in this volume, written by Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, for the connection with citizenship. Much has been written on the Wasatiyya movement. See, for example, Raymond Baker, Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 2003). 133 Roel Meijer, “The Problem of the Political in Islamist Movements,” in Whatever Happened to the Islamists? Salafis, Heavy Metal Muslims, and the Lure of Consumerist Islam, eds. Amel Boubekeur and Olivier Roy (London: Hurst/Columbia University Press, 2012), 27–60. 134 For Algeria, see Le Sueur, Between Terror and Democracy, 40. 135 Nathan J. Brown, Amr Hamzawy, and Marina Ottaway, Islamist Movements and the Democratic Process in the Arab World: Exploring the Gray Zones (Carnegie Papers No. 67, 2006), 5–17. 136 Chris Harnisch and Quinn Mecham, “Democratic Ideology in Islamist Opposition? The Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘Civil State’,” Middle Eastern Studies 45 (2009): 189–205. 137 Rachel Scott, The Challenge of Political Islam; Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, “Strategy and Learning in the Formation of Egypt’s Wasat Party,” Comparative Politics 36 (2004):

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de la J­ustice et Développement in Morocco (pjd),138 Ennahda in Tunisia,139 and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.140 This is not to deny that the post-Islamist turn has been ambiguous, divided, and limited, as many have pointed out, and that its ambiguity in the end explains why a coalition in many countries, such as Egypt, has failed to materialise.141 But in other cases, such as in Tunisia, they were able to help erect a “political society,” as Linz and Stepan point out,142 establishing a coalition known as the Collectif in 2005, and finding a compromise laid down in the constitution of 2014. Even Salafism has seen the emergence of a rights movement within its ranks and the demand for an accountable government laid down in a social contract.143 The rise of political parties. This development has, however, been criticised as a means whereby the state can co-opt politics and “upgrade” the authoritarian bargain.144 The first multi-party elections were held in Tunisia in 1981, Egypt in 1983, Jordan in 1989, and Morocco in 1992. In all cases, however, hopes were quickly dashed as a “façade democracy” was installed. In 1988 the Rassemblement Constitutionel Démocratique (rcd) of Ben Ali won all the seats in the elections, the same happened with the National Democratic Party (ndp) in Egypt in 1990, as it did in Jordan in 1993, marking the end of the democratic

138 139

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205–228; Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, “The Muslim Brotherhood and Democratic Transition in Egypt,” Middle East Law and Governance Journal 3 (2011): 204–223. Eva Wegner, “Islamist Moderation without Democratization: The Coming of Age of the Moroccan Party of Justice and Development?” Democratization 16 (2009): 157–175. Francesco Cavatorta and Fabio Merone, “Moderation Through Exclusion? The Journey of the Tunisian Ennahda from Fundamentalist to Conservative Party,” Democratization 20 (2013): 857–875. Meijer, “The Problem of the Political in Islamists Movements,” 17–60. Roel Meijer, “The Majority Strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Die Orient 54 (2013): 21–30. Stepan, Alfred and Juan Linz, “Democratization Theory and the Arab Spring,” Journal of Democracy 24 (2013): 15–30. See Chapter 13 in this volume, and Roel Meijer, (ed.). Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement (London: Hurst, 2009). For the political dimension see especially Stéphane Lacroix, “Islamists Dilemmas in Post-Arab Spring Saudi Arabia,” in Salafism after the Arab Awakening: Contending with People’s Power, ed. Francesco Cavatorta and Fabio Merone (London: Hurst, forthcoming). The literature on this topic is vast: see for Tunisia, Eva Bellin, “Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics 36 (2004): 139–157; for Morocco, Abdessalam Maghraoui, “Depoliticization in Morocco,” Journal of Democracy 13 (2002): 24–32; for Egypt, Maye Kassem, Egyptian Politics: The Dynamics of Authoritarian Rule (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004) among many others.

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experiment. Mostly the criticism of political parties concentrates on political system itself, particularly the manipulation of electoral rules, gerrymandering, fraud, and intimidation. However, despite the poor showing of formal politics, a major change has occurred since the 1960s in the sense that the monopoly of state ideology has been broken. Competition between parties has also led to greater pressure to come up with elaborate programs and spell out the civil, political, social, and economic rights of citizens.145 The new interest in a multi-party system has been confirmed after the Arab Uprisings, when in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Libya free and fair elections were held. These experiences have been mixed, sometimes disastrous, and even in countries, such as Morocco, where the pjd delivered the prime minister after the first elections in November 2012, the results were heavily restricted by patronage system of the king.146 Nevertheless, even in Egypt, the influence of the Wasatiyya trend and a more rational politics based on concrete social and economic programs instead of the slogan “Islam is the Solution” was apparent.147 Social movements. Social movements stepped into the political vacuum that the failure of formal political parties had left behind, and have been the main driving force behind the Arab Uprisings. They have been especially important in formulating lists of grievances and demands, which have themselves been increasingly couched in terms of rights.148 They have also been adept at forming cross-ideological, cross-sectarian, and broad class coalitions, ones which could unite on the basis of shared frames.149 Moreover, on account of their horizontal nature they countered the dominant political culture of patronage, clientelism. More than just being political parties, they have, therefore, been 145 Mona El-Ghobashy, “The Metamorphosis of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (2005): 373–395; Sana Abed-Kotob, “The Accommodationists Speak: Goals and Strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 (1995): 321–339. 146 See Chapter 5 in this volume by James Sater. 147 See Chapter 12 in this volume by Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen. 148 Joel Beinin and Frédéric Vairel (eds), Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011); Quintan Wiktorowicz (ed.), Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2004). 149 Janine A. Clark, “The Conditions of Islamist Moderation: Unpacking Cross-Ideological Cooperation in Jordan,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 38 (2006): 539– 560; Maha Abdelrahman, “The Transnational and the Local: Egyptian Activists and Transnational Protest Networks,” British Journal of Middle East Studies 38 (2011): 407–424; Maha Abdelrahman, “‘With the Islamists? – Sometimes. With the State? – Never!’ Cooperation with the Left and Islamists in Egypt,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 36 (2011): 37–54; Dina Shehata, Islamist and Secularists in Egypt: Opposition, Conflict, and Cooperation (London: Routledge, 2010).

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at the forefront of the rise of citizenship.150 This applied to the movements starting in the interior in Tunisia,151 the different movements such as the Palestinian intifada (equal rights), those represented by Kifaya (political rights), the April Movement (workers’ rights), and the worker’s movements.152 But it is not just the demands and coalitions that are important. Just as significant for social movements are the practices of its members, how they act and perform when contesting the prevalent citizen regimes and when developing new experimental citizenship forms. The Arab Uprisings were carried out by social movements, such as February 20 Movement,153 the early uprisings in Syria,154 the Tahrir occupy movement.155 The rise of independent trade unions. Trade unions became more active in the 1970s after the unravelling of the authoritarian bargain, when they increasingly tried to wriggle out of the constraints of corporatism. In their struggle for independence and legalisation they defended civil rights, while also demanding economic (job security, pay rises) and social rights (welfare provisions) in their struggle against privatisation. The ugtt was able to acquire greater freedom and its demands became increasingly political, to the extent that at one point they intended to establish their own political party,156 and its regional offices played a crucial role during the uprisings in Tunisia.157 The Algerian trade union, the Union Générale des Travailleurs Algériens (ugta), became active

150 Roel Meijer, “Political Citizenship and Social Movements in the Arab World,” in Handbook of Political Citizenship and Social Movements, ed. Hein Anton van der Heijden (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2014), 628–660. 151 Habib Ayeb, “Social and Political Geography of the Tunisian Revolution: the Alfa Grass Revolution,” Review of African Political Economy 38 (2011): 467–479. 152 Jeroen Gunning and Ilan Zvi Baron, Why Occupy a Square? People, Protests and Movements in the Egyptian Revolution (London: Hurst, 2013); Maha Abdelrahman, Egypt’s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings (London: Routledge, 2015). 153 Anja Hoffmann and Christoph König, “Scratching the Democratic Façade: Framing Strategies of the 20 February Movement,” Mediterranean Politics 18 (2013): 1–22; Koenraad Bogaert, “The Revolt of Small Towns: The Meaning of Morocco’s History and Geography of Social Protests,” Review of African Political Economy 42 (2015): 124–140. 154 Salwa Ismail, “The Syrian Uprising: Imagining and Performing the Nation,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11 (2011): 538–549. 155 Bahgat Korany and Rabab El-Mahdi, eds., Arab Spring in Egypt: Revolution and Beyond (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2014). 156 Christopher, Tunisia, 46. 157 See Chapter 4 in this volume, written by Sami Zemni. See also Sami Zemni, “From SocioEconomic Protest to National Revolt: The Labor Origins of the Tunisian Revolution,” in The Making of the Tunisian Revolution: Contexts, Architects, Prospects, ed. Nouri Gana (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 127–146.

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in the 1990s in protesting against privatisation programmes.158 In Morocco, several more radical trade unions joined the February 20 Movement. Furthermore, the Egyptian trade unions played a particularly crucial role during the uprisings against Mubarak.159 Human rights. The most active groups promoting the rights discourse – mainly civil rights, but also political, social, and economic rights – have been the human rights organisations in the mena region.160 They have had a major impact in all countries from the earliest founding of Lique Tunisienne des Droits de l’Hommes (ltdh) in Tunis in 1977 to the many official human rights organisations in the rest of the region. Although highly abstract, and accused of being a Western import, they have also found support from the Islamist movement, which has fallen back on human rights as a tool against the repression of the state. Human rights organisations also played a direct role in the uprisings, such as the amdh in Morocco, helping to formulate the demands for civil rights against the state and to organise the local tansiqiyyat into creating networks, demonstrations, and other “acts of citizenship.” Everyday citizenship, practices and acts of citizenship. With the unravelling of the authoritarian bargain the state could no longer provide services, but in addition it also increasingly lost control of society and the economy, with the result that the informal economy expanded and people increasingly had to look after themselves. That people develop strategies to evade or resist state policies and sanctions does not mean that they do not have notions of citizenship and rights; many of the poor have a strong sense of justice and demand that the state takes care of them.161 But, as anthropologists have shown, there are many ways of undermining the official discourse of power and hegemony by what Wedeen calls “transgressions.” These can take the form of ambiguities, jokes, political parodies, and “everyday, lived experiences of 158 Le Sueur, Between Terror and Democracy, 111. 159 Joel Beinin, The Struggle for Workers Rights in Egypt (Washington d.c.: Washington Solidarity Center, 2010); Joel Beinin, Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016); Anne Alexander and Mostafa Bassiouny, Bread, Freedom, Social Justice (London: Zed Press, 2014). 160 Susan Waltz, “The Politics of Human Rights in North Africa,” in Islam, Democracy, and the State in North Africa, ed. John P. Entelis (Bloomington: Indiana State University, 1997), 75–92. 161 Reem Saad, “A Moral Order Reversed? Agricultural Land Changes Hands, Again,” in Politics from Above, Politics from Below: The Middle East in the Age of Economic Reform, ed. Eberhard Kienle (London: Saqi Books, 2003), 229–241; Cilja Harders, “The Informal Social Pact: The State and the Urban Poor in Cairo,” in Politics from Above, 191–213.

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opposition and critique,”162 or by what Bayat calls “non-movements.” It is through this resistance that new forms of citizenship have been created during the uprisings.163 Minority rights. An important role in claiming equal civil rights and recognition of cultural rights has been played by minority groups, especially the larger ones, such as the ethnic-minority Berbers (40 per cent of the Moroccan population, 20–25 per cent of Algerian population) and Kurds (20 per cent of the population of Iraq, and 10 per cent of Syria), and the religious-minority Copts (10 per cent in Egypt) and Shiʿis (60 per cent in Iraq, 40 per cent in Lebanon). All of them had suffered from the hegemony of Arab Sunni dominance during the post-independence period. The Berber movement in Algeria and Morocco was much broader than a regional, cultural movement, and it made demands for national political reform, equal rights, democratisation, human rights, and the right to establish cultural organisations, all of which were directed against authoritarianism. They were also active as social movements, organising petitions, publications, and school strikes.164 The same can be said of Shiʿi movements in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, which have tried to establish broad cross-sectarian fronts. It seems that the Amazigh have not fallen into the trap of enclosure, whereas Shiʿis have been pushed into the sectarian, exclusionary logic that the Sunni Gulf states have been promoting, and they have consequently undermined the inclusionary solutions that were promoted during the early period of the Arab Uprisings in Syria,165 Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia that called for joint Sunni-Shiʿi cooperation based on common citizenship. To a large extent the rise of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is a result of the active undermining of this project by Saudi Arabia and Iran. Constitutions. The major change in the discourse of rights was not just the emphasis on political parties, it was also in the renewed interest in constitutions. Constitutions have played a role in citizenship regimes in the region ever 162 Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination, 89–90. 163 Salwa Ismail, Political Life in Cairo’s New Quarters: Encountering the Everyday State (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). 164 For the Amazigh movement, see Willis’ chapter “The Berber Question,” 203–229; Paul Silverstein and David Crawford, “Amazigh Activism and the Moroccan State,” Middle East Report Project 223 (Winter 2004): 44–48; Bruce Maddy-Weizman, “Ethno-politics and Globalisation in North Africa: The Berber Culture Movement,” The Journal of North African Studies 11 (2006): 71–83; Le Sueur, Between Terror and Democracy, 83. 165 See Chapter 3 by Ray Hinnebusch and Ola Rifai in this volume.

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since the nineteenth century. The Tunisian constitution of 1861, the Ottoman constitution of 1876, and the Egyptian ones of 1879 and 1923 were important markers. After independence constitutions were much less important, having been hastily drawn up by a small group and applied without debate or referendum, often being abrogated, suspended, or simply ignored. Since the 1970s constitutions have been taken a lot more seriously. The constitution of 1971 in Egypt marked an important point in the development of this increased importance, as did the constitution of 1989 in Algeria and the later Sant’Egidio Platform proposal to end the civil war,166 while those of Morocco, and elsewhere, also became important because they started to lay down the rights of citizens and to solve some of the basic problems existing between state and citizen. Constitutions were seen as the foundation for solving political problems. Negotiations surrounding them were directed towards drawing up a new constitution as a means of creating a political solution. Minority rights were recognised in constitutions; for example, in 2002 the Algerian constitution was amended to recognise Tamazight as a national language. The Tunisian constitution of 2014 was a landmark document, and one that functioned as a new social contract. The two Egyptian ones of 2012 and 2014 attracted widespread interest and heated debates on their content.167 Restoration of the authoritarian contract. Needless to say, authoritarianism has not been defeated and has instead been “upgraded,” proving itself to be more resilient than many had hoped. However, it remains to be seen if the regime in Egypt can restore the authoritarian bargain without guaranteeing social and economic rights. The Mubarak regime demonstrated that a repressive citizenship regime based on stability, security, and economic development does not last long when economic development remains an illusion. Neither is the alternative of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, based on overt discrimination, privilege (of foreign fighters), sectarian exclusion, and open violence viable in the long run. In the end, in Iraq and Syria a social contract will have to be signed by all parties. As it will have to address all aspects of the citizenship regime – the civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights of groups and individuals, international boundaries, political and economic systems, and foreign relations – this will prove to be an immense task.

166 It called for the end of violence, the separation of powers, respect for the multi-party system, and recognition of the Berber identity. Le Sueur, Between Terror and Democracy, 66–67. 167 See chapter 14 in this volume by Rachel Scott.

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Conclusion I have argued that the present political crisis in the Middle East and North Africa is the result of the specific citizenship regimes in the region and has its origins in the previous two historical periods, those of colonialism and of the post-independence authoritarian regimes. Neither of these citizenship regimes were able to produce stable citizen-state relations based on equal civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights. During the colonial period the bargain with the notables was elitist, discriminatory, exclusionary, and preserved many of the pre-modern forms of state formation, while the authoritarian bargain that replaced it did not meet the demands formulated during the struggle for independence. The exchange of civil and political rights for social and economic ones worked for a limited period but collapsed when economic austerity measures undermined limited political reform measures, enhanced economic exclusion, and deepened and expanded social marginalisation. In response, powerful new movements emerged that attempted to re-appropriate repressed cultural identities and civil, social, and economic rights, and which sought to define and establish a new inclusionary, egalitarian, and equitable social contract. Bibliography Abed-Kotob, Sana. “The Accommodationists Speak: Goals and Strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 (1995): 321–339. Abdelrahman, Maha. “The Transnational and the Local: Egyptian Activists and Transnational Protest Network.” British Journal of Middle East Studies 38 (2011): 407–424. Abdelrahman, Maha. “‘With the Islamists? – Sometimes. With the State? – Never!’ Cooperation with the Left and Islamists in Egypt.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 36 (2011): 37–54. Abdelrahman, Maha. Egypt’s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings. London: Routledge, 2015. Addi, Lahouari. L’Algérie et la démocratie: Pouvoir et crise du politique dans l’Algérie contemporaine. Paris: Éditions la découverte, 1995. Alexander, Anne, and Mostafa Bassiouny. Bread, Freedom, Social Justice. London: Zed Press, 2014. Alexander, Christopher. Tunisia: Stability and Reform in the Modern Maghreb. London: Routledge, 2010.

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Al-Khalil, Samir. Republic of Fear: The Inside Story of Saddam’s Iraq. New York: Pantheon Books, 1989. Ayalon, Ami. The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Ayeb, Habib. “Social and Political Geography of the Tunisian Revolution: the Alfa Grass Revolution.” Review of African Political Economy 38 (2011): 467–479. Baker, Raymond, W. Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Bayat, Asef. Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Beattie, Kirk J. Egypt during the Nasser Years: Ideology, Politics and Civil Society. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994. Beinin, Joel. The Struggle for Workers Rights in Egypt. Washington D.C: Washington Solidarity Center, 2010. Beinin, Joel. Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016. Beinin, Joel, and Zachary Lockman. Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882–1954. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Bellin, Eva. “Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics (2004): 139–57. Bianchi, Robert. Unruly Corporatism: Associational Life in Twentieth-Century Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Bier, Laura. Revolutionary Womanhood: Feminism, Modernity and the State in Nasser’s Egypt. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2011. Bogaert, Koenraad. “The Revolt of Small Towns: The Meaning of Morocco’s History and Geography of Social Protests.” Review of African Political Economy 42 (2015): 124–140. Brown, Nathan, Amr Hamzawy, and Marina Ottaway. Islamist Movements and the Democratic Process in the Arab World: Exploring the Gray Zones. Carnegie Papers No. 67, 2006. Brynen, Rex, Peter W. Moore, Bassel F. Salloukh, and Marie-Joëlle Zahar (eds). Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democratization in the Arab World. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2012. Bush, Ray, and Habib Ayeb (eds). Marginality and Exclusion in Egypt. London: Zed Books, 2012. Camau, Michel, and Vincent Geisser, Le syndrome autoritaire: Politique en Tunisie de Bourguiba à Ben Ali. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2003. Carter, B.L. The Copts in Egyptian Politics. London: Croom Helm, 1986. Cavatorta, Francesco, and Fabio Merone. “Moderation Through Exclusion? The Journey of the Tunisian Ennahda from Fundamentalist to Conservative Party.” Democratization 20 (2013): 857–875.

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chapter 3

Syria: Identity, State Formation, and Citizenship Raymond Hinnebusch and Ola Rifai

Conceptualising Citizenship and Its Requisites

Assessing citizenship in the Arab World and Syria requires consideration of the factors that advance its normative hegemony. Citizenship implies equal treatment under the law, rights of political participation, and certain entitlements, not least the right of residence and to hold a passport; conversely, it involves duties such as national service, payment of taxes, and obedience to the law. The modern notion of citizenship, particularly the assumption of equality of rights and duties, was a by-product of the French Revolution, and is intimately connected with both the state centralisation and mass nationalism that the revolution promoted, converging in the idea of membership (with attendant rights and duties) in a nation corresponding to the state’s territorial borders. Citizenship therefore implies Weberian statehood, including a state monopoly of legitimate violence, infrastructural power, territorial penetration, and rule of law, which, historically, has emerged from a dual process of centralisation and expansion of state power via the incorporation of mass participation through political institutions.1 Effective political participation is contingent on an active civil society, and the possession of sufficient material requisites by the population, notably minimum levels of education/literacy and a lack of extreme poverty and class inequality. State building processes are, therefore, paralleled by nation-building. Statebuilders normally try to bring state and identity (nation) into congruence because of the greater domestic legitimation and international power that this affords, promoted with tools at their disposal such as the media, state employment, conscription, and national school systems;2 the process may also happen “bottom up” as a people, organised in movements, come to see themselves as a nation, and hence desire a state of their own, a development usually related to “awakenings” focused on national language, culture, and historical memory. 1 Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968). 2 Anthony Smith, “States and Homelands: The Social and Geopolitical Implications of National Territory,” Millennium 10 (1981): 187–202.

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Wars and struggles for national liberation involving mass ­mobilisation on a national basis have historically advanced the hegemony of the idea of citizenship. Actual-existing citizenship can only be understood in the context of this dual state/nation-building project. This chapter will look at how state formation and identity have interacted to shape citizenship in Syria over time. The main argument is that the particular state-building formula that prevailed in Syria, the Baʿathist’s particular version of populist neo-patrimonialism, achieved some of the features of Weberian statehood and fostered a level of national identity; however, it eventually lost its initial inclusive capacity, provoking a peaceful protest movement calling for a more inclusive and equitable Syrian national identity, which acquired wide support in the early months of the Syrian Uprising; however, once the uprising turned violent, this movement was squeezed between a more coercive version of regime patrimonialism and various radical Islamist notions of community.

Contested Nationhood: Syrian Identity between the Communal Mosaic and Supra-state Visions

All nations are “constructed,” but Syria is a particular challenge for nationbuilders since it does not benefit from distinctively Syrian national myths or a history of separate statehood, and suffers from imperialist-imposed artificial boundaries incongruent with the historic geographical region of Bilad al-Sham. The result is that both sub- and supra-state identities have powerfully competed with loyalties to the state and, despite many decades of Syrian statehood, these have been kept alive by their instrumental use, by both ruling elites and opposition movements, against each other. The various empires into which Syria was incorporated over many centuries fostered broader Islamic identities, while also often dividing the country into several provinces. Nevertheless, a certain degree of economic integration fostered under the Ottoman Tanzimat and the identity vacuum left by the collapse of the Ottomans led emergent nationalist movements, after the First World War, to demand a unified Arab Syria “within its natural borders” – ­geographic Bilad al-Sham – perhaps confederated with Iraq.3 This “Greater Syria” might have become a focus of national identity, but the country’s d­ ismemberment into four mini-states and the creation of Israel in Palestine, historically part of southern Syria, generated an identity crisis in the post-Ottoman period. Once 3 James Gevin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 152.

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the Western great powers had divided historic Syria, and the French occupation had fostered divide and rule among sub-state identities, the dominant nationalist movement, the National Bloc (al-Kutla al-Wataniyya), gradually came to prioritise the independence and unity of the truncated Syrian state. Nevertheless, the new Syrian state, seen as an artificial creation of imperialism by many, did not enjoy the automatic or strong loyalty of its citizens, many of whom remained attached to communal sub-state units or embraced supra-state ideologies, such as Pan-Syrianism, Pan-Islam, or Pan-Arabism. Dissatisfaction with the artificially imposed borders infused Syrian politics with irredentism from its birth. The most successful political elites and movements were those that championed Syria as Arab and as part of a wider Arab nation even if, to a degree, they accepted its (possibly temporary) separate statehood. Seeing itself as the “beating heart of Arabism,” Syria gave birth to Baʿathism, a movement that sought to unify the Arab states, and which is still the official state ideology. The Syrian state also faced the challenge of integrating a multitude of substate identities owing to its ethnic and religious diversity, which, combined with geographical heterogeneity (mountains, plains, oases, deserts), had historically fostered strong loyalties to sub-state communal groups, cities, and regions. Indirect rule of sub-state communities (millets) through religious leaders and notables during the period of the Ottoman Empire (1500– 1918), and the French fostering of the autonomy of minorities as part of a divide-and-rule strategy (1920–46), strengthened sub-state identities. Substate ethnic minorities include Kurds (7 per cent), Armenians, and small numbers of Assyrians, Circassians, and Turkmen while religious minorities include Greek Orthodox Christians (8 per cent), various smaller Christian sects, and several Islamic minority sects – the most important being the Alawis (12 per cent), the Druze (3 per cent), and the Ismaʿilis (1.5 per cent). The multiplicity of identities in Syria – sub-, state, and supra-state – and the fact that none is hegemonic – taken for granted as the “normal” dominant loyalty – suggests a high potential for fragmentation and undermines the legitimacy the state would enjoy if its boundaries corresponded to a distinct and uncontested national community. This is ameliorated by the fact that individuals normally hold several identities (which may overlap) simultaneously, and which are fluid rather than hardened into irreconcilable primordial blocs. Furthermore, the composition of the current Syrian state, over 90 per cent Arab and 74 per cent Sunni Muslim, constitutes a potentially unifying basis of nationhood. Which identities prevail among individuals, groups, and the country at any given time is shaped by the state-building projects of political entrepreneurs. In normal times, multiple identities readily co-exist; however,

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the “security dilemma” provoked by the breakdown of public order after 2011 has tended to polarise communities into irreconcilable sub-state groups.

Citizenship under Oligarchic Liberalism

Syria’s post-independence liberal institutions, with their checks and balances, an autonomous judiciary, and competitive elections were, in principle, compatible with equality of citizenship. However, their inclusive potential was stunted by the extreme class differentiation of the population, especially the gap between the great landed notables and the peasants, which, in effect, allowed the former to dominate elections and parliament. Syria’s post-independence class formation, did, however, spur a widening of political mobilisation by several middle class parties, which contested the power of the oligarchy. A “new middle class” emerged that was attracted to class and national identities that rivalled traditional attachments to family, sect, or quarter. An important stratum of this new class was drawn from the rural towns and the peasantry, including educated youth from the Alawi, Druze, Ismaʿili, and Orthodox Christians minorities, who embraced secular identities that enabled them to participate as equals in the national community. If the ideology of the ruling notability was, by this time, Syria-centric, the middle class movements challenged it in the name of supra-state ideologies, which expressed many Syrians’ yearning to be part of the once unified and now lost larger Arab-Islamic world – the Pan-Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood; the pan-Syrianism of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and the Pan-Arabism of the Baʿath party. While Pan-Islam did not appeal to the minorities, and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (ssnp) was too minority-focused, the Baʿath’s secular Arab nationalism, potentially bringing together the Arabic-speaking minorities with the Sunni majority (albeit excluding non-Arabs such as the Kurds), was the most successful in bridging the cleavages of the Syrian “mosaic”; this was particularly so after its 1953 merger with Akram al-Hawrani’s peasant-based Arab Socialist Party, when the Baʿath also acquired a crosssectarian peasant base.4 From the mid-1950s, Syria experienced a period of relatively free associational activity and political contestation indicative of expanding political inclusion; however, this mobilisation exceeded the incorporative capacity of Syria’s fragile political institutions. The loss of legitimacy by the oligarchy, especially 4 Michael Van Dusen, “Downfall of a Traditional Elite,” in Political Elites and Political Development in the Middle East, ed. Frank Tachau (Cambridge ma: Schenkman-Wiley, 1975), 115–155.

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due to its failure in the Palestine war, opened the door to a radicalisation of the military that, combined with the frustrations of the reformist middle class parties and the grievances of the landless peasantry, spilled over into praetorian instability. This was aggravated by the permeability of the country’s artificial borders to external penetration by rival regional powers such as Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, making Syria a battleground for regional and Cold war struggles. Symptomatic of the weakness of attachment to a separate Syrian state was the political elites’ surrender of sovereignty in the 1958 union with Egypt, propelled by mass Pan-Arab enthusiasm and the fear that class conflicts and external pressures had made the country ungovernable.

Citizenship under the Baʿath Regime (1963–2010)



Minoritarian Military Socialism and the Exclusion of Old Sunni Society Originating in a 1963 coup by a handful of military officers, the Baʿath regime faced considerable opposition from political rivals, especially the old oligarchy, Nasserites, and Islamists. From the outset, the new regime was handicapped by a certain sectarian image: the Alawi minority that had flocked to the armed forces and to the Baʿath Party, the two institutions that were seeking to monopolise power in Syria, was inevitably resented by the Sunni Muslim majority, the religiously minded of whom regard the Alawis as heretical.5 The Baʿath regime tried to frame the conflict in class, not sectarian, terms: it launched a socialist “revolution from above” – land reform, nationalisation of finance and industry – that would build the rural and class power-base needed to stabilise its rule in the face of intense opposition. But initially the key to its survival was control of the army: the Baʿath purged officers suspected of disloyalty, mostly Sunnis, replacing them with ncos, often Alawis. Thus, from the outset, Baʿath rule appeared to many as both military and Alawi rule, and socialism as an instrument by which the rurals would despoil the traditionally dominant city. Moreover, in this period the Baʿath Party was itself split internally by power struggles. One conflict in 1963–66 pitted the party founders Aflaq and Bitar, who expressed the reformist worldview of the urban middle class, against “expeasant” rurals advocating a radical revolution. While this struggle was about ideology and personal power, party institutions proved unable to settle it and both sides exploited sectarian ties in the battle to control the key military units 5 Nikolaos van Dam, The Struggle for Power in Syria: Sectarianism, Regionalism and Tribalism in Politics, 1961–1980 (London: Croom-Helm, 1981).

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needed to prevail in the power struggle. The provincial radicals won out, but they soon split over the 1967 defeat by Israel, with the more “realist” wing under Hafiz al-Asad using his military power base to purge the leftist ideologues who dominated party institutions. In both of these major intra-Baʿath showdowns the opposing camps were cross-sectarian and civil-military coalitions at odds over power and ideology.6 However, the inability of party institutions to settle these conflicts peacefully demonstrated a failure to build autonomous political institutions. As such, Baʿathist state-building got off to a rocky start  – grounded in military force, institutionally fragile, and excluding much of urban Sunni society.

State Formation under Hafiz al-Asad: Citizenship under Populist Neo-patrimonialism Hafiz al-Asad’s strategy of regime-building followed a neo-patrimonial formula, mixing modern bureaucratic organisation with “traditional” practices known to Ibn Khaldun, notably reliance on ʿasabiyya (“group-feeling,” or “group solidarity”). He concentrated power in a “presidential monarchy” through strategies of co-opting and balancing. He used his military power base to free himself from Baʿath Party ideological constraints, while co-opting into his inner circle army and party loyalists Sunnis, such as General Mustafa Tlas and the party leader Abdul Halim Khaddam. He then built up a jamaʿa (“group”) of personal Alawi followers, who were often his kin, whom he appointed to crucial security and military commands, which enhanced his control of the military. To placate urban Sunnis, especially the Damascenes, he co-opted significant numbers of them into the top ranks of the government and initiated limited economic liberalisation that was to be of benefit to the merchant classes. The regime acquired also some nationalist legitimacy from its role in the Pan-Arab struggle with Israel, notably in the relative success of the 1973 war.7 At the same time, Asad’s consolidation of the regime depended on establishing a revenue base. This was advanced by his use of his Pan-Arab foreign policy to access a share of the hydrocarbon rent available in mena after the 1970s’ oil price boom (later replaced by Syria’s own oil revenues). Rent lubricated client networks running outward from the core elites, and coopted wider elite elements across sectarian lines. Asad’s tolerance of corrupt 6 Itamar Rabinovich, Syria under the Baʿth: The Army-Party Symbiosis (New York: Halstead Press, 1972); Munif al-Razzaz, al-Tajriba al-Murra [“The Bitter Experience”] (Beirut: Dar alghandur, 1967). 7 Raymond Hinnebusch, Syria: Revolution from Above (Abingdon: Routledge, 2001), 65–88.

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self-enrichment by regime barons gave them a stake in regime survival. A “military-mercantile complex,” as Sadiq al-Azm put it,8 in which the Alawi elite, and particularly military and intelligence officers, entered into business deals with the Damascene Sunni merchant class, generated a “state bourgeoisie” with a privileged stake in the regime. Finally, at its base, the regime incorporated a cross-sectarian coalition of workers and peasants through party and union organisation, labour rights, land reform, and co-operatisation. The Baʿath revolution benefited a large proportion of the lower classes, particularly peasants who received land, high prices for their crops from the state, subsidised inputs, and the electrification of their villages, and whose children got better access to education and state careers;9 the urban masses received subsidised food and other basic commodities. This amounted to a populist “social contract” in which citizens traded political rights for economic entitlements. Baʿathist socio-economic reforms, in breaking down the enormous class stratification under the oligarchy, as well as expanding education, literacy, and upward mobility, led to many of the basic material requisites of citizenship being available. The Baʿath’s statist development strengthened the material foundations of statehood: state apparatus, infrastructure (roads, rail), the integration of state territory, and agro-industrialisation, which promoted a national market. This, alongside the widening of secular education, geographic mobility, and non-agricultural employment, as well as the inward-looking autarky promoted by statist economic development, made the state the focus of opportunity, thus helping attach the individual’s identity to it. In parallel, certain regime practices sought to reconcile Syria’s multitude of identities in ways sufficiently inclusive to foster citizenship. The constitution specified that the president be a Muslim and Islamic law a main source of legislation – congruent with the fact that 90 per cent of Syria’s population is Muslim. Recruitment to cabinets and Baʿath party leadership bodies ensured that each identity group was represented, albeit unequally. Religious and ethnic minorities enjoyed autonomy in matters of personal status and greater protection than in most other Middle Eastern states by virtue of the Baʿath regime’s character as, in some ways, one of minorities. Baʿathist Arabism was compatible with Syrian state identity through its discourse on Syria’s special status as the “beating heart of Arabism” and in its secular inclusiveness. The country’s 8 Patrick Seale, Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 456. 9 Raymond Hinnebusch, Authoritarian Power and State Formation in Baʿthist Syria: Army, Party and Peasant (Boulder co: Westview, 1990), 166–219.

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majority Arab identity, formal equality of all citizens in a secular state, a long history of religious tolerance, and the cross-sectarian coalition incorporated into the Baʿath regime long contained and eased sectarian divides. Yet, at the same time, regime practices also worked against citizenship. Small group ʿasabiyya was encouraged by the insecurity (the domestic security dilemma) associated with recurrent power struggles, in which group identities were often exploited. The politicisation and enervation of the judiciary and all other checks and balances debilitated the rule of law and equality before the law, and the competition for patronage via clientalism put a premium on wasta (“connections”) based on personal or group particularisms. While Baʿathist corporatist institutions were, in principle, inclusive, the use of sectarianism as shorthand for loyalty at the top and of clientalism to get privileged access to patronage undermined equality of citizenship. The regime’s reliance on buying loyalty through patronage also enervated the state’s capital accumulation capacity, keeping it reliant on finite rent inflows while obstructing transparency and accountability. Furthermore, Baʿathist institutions never incorporated more than about half the population, and those excluded tended to gravitate to the most durable opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, allied with elements of the merchant class, old oligarchy, and politicised Muslim clergy, which mounted periodic revolts that culminated in the protracted Ikhwan Uprising of 1976– 82. Although this uprising reflected the class resentment of those damaged by Baʿathist socialism it was expressed in violent sectarian terms and its brutal suppression left enduring distrust across communal divides. It made the Alawi political elite wary of economic or political liberalisation that could empower the Sunni-dominated business or religious establishments, but at the same time, in order to marginalise Sunni militants, President Hafiz al-Asad tried to appease and foster a moderate, non-political Islamic establishment by building mosques and patronising the ʿulama (“members of the Islamic religious class”) at the expense of secularism. Thus, Baʿathist state builders, in their effort to consolidate their regime, exploited both sub-state loyalties, notably the solidarity of the Alawi sect, which cemented the core of the new state elite, class-based socialist ideology and organisation that incorporated a cross-sectarian mass constituency, and suprastate Pan-Arab identity as a means to legitimise the state. The opposition to the regime promoted alternative (mostly Sunni Islamic) identities in order to contest the regime’s legitimacy. This continual reproduction of sub- and suprastate identities, amidst regime-opposition power struggles, undermined efforts to consolidate the congruence between state/territory and identity/nation.

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Regional Politics and Identity Developments at the regional level, particularly the decline of the Arab nationalism that was the Baʿath’s raison d’ être, also impacted on identity. The disappearance from political agendas, after the 1970s, of Pan-Arab unity projects signified the consolidation of statehood in the region, including in Baʿathist Syria. After 60 years of separate statehood the boundaries of the contemporary Syrian state were accepted as the normal framework for domestic politics. The loss of the Syrian Golan Heights to Israel gave a specifically Syrian territorial dimension to Syria’s Arab nationalism and fostered a prioritisation of Syria’s state interests in the struggle with Israel. It was ironic that the Baʿath Party, which won the struggle for control of the Syrian state in the name of Pan-Arabism, eventually consolidated the state at the expense of potential Pan-Arab unionism. The persisting dilemma for Syria was that an exclusively Syrian – not essentially Arab – nation-state still held little credibility, manifest in Syria’s continual and intense involvement in Pan-Arab issues. Bashar al-Asad’s Post-populism: Stalled Citizenship When Bashar al-Asad succeeded to the presidency, his reformist discourse sparked the Damascus Spring in which emergent civil society called for a non-violent transition to democracy under the banner of an inclusive Syrian citizenship. However, when hardliners in the regime and opposition quickly side-lined the possibility of a transition pact, leading to the repression of the Damascus Spring, the regime missed a chance to widen its base by incorporating the moderate opposition. The regime turned instead to an effort to “modernise authoritarianism” through liberal economic reforms along the East Asian model of economic growth first, political liberalisation later. Neo-liberal economic reforms were necessitated by the exhaustion of the public sector and the decline of oil rent. Although in principle a “social market economy” was to provide a social safety net for the losers in the transition to a market economy, in reality this project inevitably meant privileging investors, and, in practice, crony capitalists close to the centre of power at the expense of the regime’s traditional backers. In this period, a narrative of Syrian citizenship increasingly overlapped with the Baʿathist narrative of Arabism. Bashar used Arabism, exploiting events such as the us war on Iraq and the Israeli wars on Hizbollah and Hamas, to promote Syria as the centre of Arab nationalist resistance to US–Israeli hegemony, contrasting its support for them with the complicity of other Arab leaders with Washington. Syrianism was also advanced by cross-sectarian integration at the elite level, symbolised by the president’s marriage to a Sunni

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woman from Homs. Attachment to a secular Syrian identity was reinforced by the sectarian strife in neighbouring Iraq and Lebanon. Wieland10 recounts a widely accepted narrative of Syria as an island of civility amidst this violent sectarian conflict: minorities fleeing sectarian violence in Iraq were largely welcomed and integrated into Syrian society. The regime, in some ways a coalition of minorities, posed as protector of the latter and mediator between them and the Sunni majority. Yet, under the surface, communal distrust was rife and, as a taboo subject, could not be faced and dealt with openly. It became aggravated as social mobility slowed down for most people while a few at the top – perhaps the most famous of whom was Rami Makhlouf, the president’s cousin – were ostentatiously enriched, with success appearing to be dependent on Alawi sectarian connections to power. The relative decline of secular ideologies, including Arab nationalism and socialism, after 1990 left an identity vacuum that was being filled at the societal level by Sunni Islam, fostered by both regime sponsorship of Sufis and Gulf funding of Salafis; this, in turn, provoked a defensive religious counter-identity in minorities, although many held to the unifying narrative of secularism. In 2004 Syria also experienced major unrest in the Kurdish-populated areas of eastern Syria, rooted in the denial of citizenship rights to some 100,000 Kurds and encouraged by the autonomy enjoyed by the Iraqi Kurds. As the destruction of the Iraqi state unleashed a wave of SunniShiʿi sectarian conflict across the region, Asad’s stand with Iran and Hizbollah against pro-us Sunni regimes generated distrust among those Sunnis who saw the Shiʿi as the “other.” What made this especially dangerous for the Syrian state was the enervation of the social contract constructed by Hafiz to contain Syria’s centrifugal forces. Bashar al-Asad attacked resistance to reform in the Baʿath Party’s old guard and trade unions, debilitating them and thereby shrivelling the regime’s organised penetration of society. The regime’s abandonment of Baʿathist socialism weakened the ideological cement that gave the party solidarity, and left a vacuum that neo-liberalism and Islamism competed to fill. This, and the neglect of the rural areas by an urban-centred economic strategy, broke the alliance with the Sunni peasantry on which the regime had consolidated itself under Hafiz and made it vulnerable to the Islamist opposition that was penetrating the regime’s former rural stronghold.11 To make up for the c­ ontraction 10 11

Carsten Wieland, Syria: A Decade of Lost Chances: Repression and Revolution from Damascus Spring to Arab Spring (Seattle: Cune Press, 2012), 79–87. Raymond Hinnebusch, “The Baʿth Party in Post-Baʿthist Syria: President, Party and the Struggle for ‘Reform’,” Middle East Critique 20(2011):.109–125.

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of its p ­ opulist-corporatist power base, the regime would have needed to pursue a parallel political liberalisation that would incorporate the winners of economic liberalisation and de-secularisation. Although attempts were made to co-opt the moderate secular opposition, moderate Islamists, and new business elites through parliament, and while tolerance of small pro-regime parties was pursued, this limited pluralisation was stunted by the continuance of the emergency law and the constitutionally enshrined majority accorded to the Baʿath Party. In summary, neo-patrimonial practices and institutions explain the consolidation and durability of the Syrian regime – namely, a mix of the personal authority of the leader, the loyalty of his in-group, and clientalism, plus bureaucratic institutions with lines of command (e.g. the army and bureaucracy) and the inclusion of constituencies (the party and unions). This strategy had, however, certain contradictions built into it – for example, clientalism’s debilitation of bureaucratic rationality – while its durability depended on the maintenance of a delicate balance between its patrimonial and bureaucratic/ institutional elements – enough of the former to keep the elite loyal and of the latter to penetrate and incorporate society. This required constant readjustment, and if either was weakened too much the regime could be destabilised. Under Bashar al-Asad, the populist element of neo-patrimonialism fell out under fiscal constraints, with the enervation of the party and the slashing of state welfare upsetting the required balance. Moreover, the dysfunctional nature of this model of governance provoked its victims to embrace rival counternarratives, notably one of inclusive democracy and equality before the law and another of a righteous Islamic polity.

The Syrian Uprising, Identity Clashes, and Citizenship

Roots and Enablers of the Uprising The Syrian Uprising was sparked by the example of the overthrow of Arab dictators elsewhere. Despite Syria’s acute social heterogeneity, the debilitation of civil society – wherein regime surveillance worked to stunt habits of association beyond the locality and neighbourhood – and the regime’s use of lethal force against protestors, a true mass movement developed against it in 2011–12. Grievances had perhaps reached a tipping point amongst those most disadvantaged by regime policy: the origins of the Syrian Uprising in villages, provincial towns such as Idlib and Deir al-Zor, medium-sized cities such as Homs and Hama, and the informal shantytowns around the big cities, compared with the relative loyalty of the major cities themselves, was indicative of the reversal

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of the regime’s social base under Bashar al-Asad – the city had replaced the village as the elites’ power base. At the same time, however, the “opportunity structure” for political mobilisation by regime opponents had improved since Hafiz’s period. Several previous instances of civil society mobilisation, such as the Damascus Spring (2001) and the Damascus Declaration (2005), even though repressed by the regime, provided experience and models for dissent. There was also a certain loss of fear as repression became more selective under Bashar, especially among the new generation. During the Uprising, atomisation was overcome by two practices: at the local level, coordinating committees in mosques planned day-to-day protests, while cyber – activists used the internet to share information, coordinate and publicise their protests, and convey a sense of national-level solidarity.12 However, unlike in some of the other states that experienced the Arab Uprisings, the regime retained a significant support base comprised of the crony capitalists and urban government employees, who were often Sunni and concentrated in the two big cities of Damascus and Aleppo, plus the minorities, which together might have made up 25 per cent of the population. The two major cities had been the main beneficiaries of tertiary investment under the economic liberalisation and their urban middle classes feared instability and the loss of their secular modern lifestyle if traditional rural or Salafi insurgents were to take power.13 Thus, in contrast to Egypt or Tunisia, the Uprising was unable to converge on the centres of power and a stalemate soon resulted. Entrepreneurs of a Syrian Civic Identity Meanwhile, the Uprising set off a clash of identities manifest in the contrary discourses of those seeking to construct different notions of what Syria should be. From the outset, the mainstream of the anti-regime uprising took the form of peaceful protest demanding true, equal citizenship in a “civil” state (in which all would enjoy equal rights regardless of ethno-nationalist or religious affiliation, or of gender). This discourse reflected an accumulation of factors. With the gradual discrediting of alternative ideologies – socialism, Marxism, and Arab nationalism – some variant of liberalism was, besides Islamism, the last remaining alternative to the regime’s ideology, one that appealed to much of the educated middle classes. Among the older generation of political activists this reflected a search for alternatives to previously-held failed ideologies; 12 13

Kim Ghattas, “Syria’s Spontaneously Organised Protests,” bbc News Online, April 22, 2011, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13168276. Raymond Hinnebusch, “Syria: From Authoritarian Upgrading to Revolution?” International Affairs 881 (2012).

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in parallel, much of the youth were affected by the global triumph of liberalism after the Cold War. Moreover, opposition movements had learned, over time, of the need to build coalitions to face the regime’s divide-and-rule tactics, and the various elements of the opposition – liberals, secular nationalists, Kurds, and even the Muslim Brotherhood found common ground in the idea of a civic identity. In Syria’s mosaic society, a Syrian identity, distinguished from (though not excluding) Arab and Islamic identities, appeared the most all-embracing alternative to Baʿathism since it could include ethnic and religious minorities as well as the educated Sunni classes. Importantly, the notion of equal citizenship rights would appeal to all who felt excluded from the regime’s client networks. Finally, during the Uprising itself, an inclusive discourse was initially imperative to win over the minorities, reaching out, for example to Alawis and Kurds; later in the Uprising (after 2012), it constituted the main alternative to the increasingly powerful and more exclusivist regime-centric and jihadi discourses. Thus, in the first years of the Uprising a myriad of secular movements advocated an explicitly Syrian civil identity that prioritised an affiliation with the Syrian state and advocated the establishment of a “state of citizenship” (dawlat al-muwatana). These groups were divided into two main factions, based on age; the old guard opposition to the regime and secular youth. The old guard was rooted in longstanding Arab nationalist and leftist traditions, hence its stances of anti-Westernism and anti-interventionism in the Uprising. The Coordination Committee for Democratic Change (ccdc) (Haʾyat al-Tansiq lil-Taghyir al-Dimuqrati) and the Current for Building the Syrian State (bssc), (Tayyar Binaʾ al-Dawlat al-Suriyya) were the most important old guard movements established during the first months of the Uprising. These movements were cross-sectarian coalitions of intellectuals and activists. The ccdc was a coalition of fourteen leftist parties commanded by renowned figures such as Haytham Manaʾ, a Sunni from Dara, Abdulaziz al-Khayer, an Alawi from Qurdaha, the birthplace of the Asads, and Louay Hussein, an Alawi who had spent nine years in jail during the Hafiz Assad era for his communist affiliation. Essentially, the ccdc and bssc advocated a peaceful transition to a democratic state that would guarantee the “principle of citizenship and equality for all Syrian citizens regardless of their ethnic and religious affiliations,”14 and advocated a “civic state” (dawla madaniyya) rejecting both theocracy and federalisation, by which Syria might be fragmented. In their discourses the ccdc and bssc both emphasised “patriotism” (wataniyya), “the motherland,” and “the 14 “Taʿrif mukhtasar bi-l-tayyar” (Current News in Brief), bssc website. Accessed October 8, 2013. http://binaa-syria.com/B/ar/content.

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Syrian people” (al-shaʿb al-Suri). They rejected the sectarian rhetoric of other opposition factions, and were outspoken critics of other (mainly exiled) opposition groups who supported Western intervention or the militarisation of the uprising, and of those groups dominated by Islamists. This reduced the credibility of these movements in the eyes of many Syrians, for whom the militarisation of the uprising was a necessary response to the Syrian regime’s military repression of the protests. Furthermore, the Syrian regime was believed to apply a strategy of divide-and-rule to fragment its opponents, promoting the ccdc and bssc as “a patriotic opposition faction” (al-muʿarada al-wataniyya), with which it pronounced itself ready to engage in dialogue. Because of this, and since the rhetoric they used to denounce Islamists, armed struggle, and western intervention were similar to that of the Syrian regime, many anti-Asad Syrians considered these groups illegitimate. The ccdc was behind the so-called Semiramis conference, which was held in Damascus in June 2011 under the theme “Syria is for all”; some two hundred anti-regime intellectuals met openly in the heart of the Syrian capital in an effort to advance a political solution to transform the country into a democratic state.15 However, the conference proved fruitless as many factions boycotted it, and it was strongly opposed by the youth protest movements, not to mention the regime. The ccdc and the bssc did mobilise a limited number of the “revolutionary youth” (shabab al-thawra), secular youths who belonged to various identity groups and came from outside Damascus but were residing in the city; however, many of these defected, claiming that their leaders did not establish effective communication channels with them and lacked “the appropriate vision of how to apply their logic [principles] on the ground.”16 The old guard leaders were divided and perceived as “seeking to ride the revolution, since it provided them with what [the opportunity to get a share of power] they have been pursuing for decades.”17 As they had rejected external funding their resources were very limited in comparison with those of other players, particularly the Islamists. As such, they were largely reduced to issuing press releases. At the same time, a “new guard” of mostly secular, formerly apolitical youth, who were inspired by their Egyptian and Tunisian counterparts, mobilised against the Asad regime on the same anti-sectarian platform. The Tsunami of Freedom Movement (Tsunami al-Hurriyya) was one example of the youth 15 “Muʾtamar Sameramis fi Dimashq” (Semiramis Conference in Damascus), Sooryoon ­website. Accessed October 8, 2013. http://www.sooryoon.net/archives/27267. 16 Rifai interview with Omar, October 1, 2012, in Damascus. 17 Rifai interview with Tammam, March 25, 2013, via Skype.

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movements that were active during the first year of the Uprising. It began in Damascus in May 2011, and, according to its founder, Oula Ramadan (an Alawi by birth), its goal is to “induce the unity of the Syrian people in order to overthrow the Assad-regime and to build a democratic state, a state of citizenship” with equal political rights for all Syrian passport holders, regardless of their religious or ethnic origins.18 It was recruited from the well-educated, middleclass stratum of young people belonging to various identity groups who had migrated to Damascus from various regions of Syria. They conducted selffunded, peaceful activities, such as organising protests and sit-ins, producing documentaries, and distributing leaflets to generate a sense of Syrianism; for example, one of the flyers distributed in Damascus in July 2011 says “Me, Mohamed, Elias, and Ali have grown up together” (ana w Mohamed w Elias w Ali rbinna sa) – with Ali standing for Alawis or Shiʿis, Elias for Christians, and Mohamed for Sunnis. It sought “to stress that loyalty should be to the Motherland and not an individual, a religion, or a sect.”19 By early 2013, many members of the Tsunami of Freedom movement had fled Syria due to suppression by both the Assad regime and the jihadis. Similar to the Tsunami Freedom Movement was the Pulse Gathering for Syrian Civil Youth (Tajammuʿ Nabid lil-Shabab al-Madani al-Suri), which was one of the first and the largest civil youth movements; Nabid’s rhetoric stressed democracy, pluralism, and citizenship rights, by which “sectarian affiliations could be transcended.”20 It claimed thousands of members working across Syria in cities like Damascus, Deir al-Zor, Homs, Aleppo, Hama, Qamishli, as well as in their suburbs.21 Nabid was an active player on the ground in mobilising secular youth from various identity groups within the urban middle-classes, though some of them also came from the lower-classes of the rural areas, and had moved to the city to study. Nabid even participated in protests dominated by Islamists, displaying banners rejecting sectarianism, in an attempt to “let [the secular] voice be heard.”22 One case in point is a banner that was displayed by a Nabid follower during a protest in Raqqa that was organised by jihadis in March 2013 which read: “Syria is a country for all, no exclusion, no exception.”23 18 Rifai interview with Oula Ramadan, January 3, 2013, in Beirut. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Rifai interview with Lama, June 1, 2012, in Damascus. 22 Ibid. 23 See picture of this banner posted on Nabid’s page on Facebook, accessed on October 8, 2013. https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=493381527388304&set=pb.17700925 2358868.-2207520000.1365936732&type=3&theater.

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Many Nabid youth were persecuted by both the regime and the Islamists, and hence they either suspended their membership or left the country. In the latter case, they resorted to new media in order to promote their message from outside the country. One notable example was Souriali, a “Syrianist” radio station created in October 2012 in Beirut to advance a sense of Syrian national unity. “Souriali serves as a platform for Syrians to talk about Syria, without borders and without limits,”24 and its programmes were designed to evoke Syrian history, symbols, and folklore in an attempt to produce a Syrian national identity. A second example is Our Syria (Suriatna), a weekly magazine established in September 2011 by a group of young middle-class Damascenes in exile that strove to “underline that Syria is the home for all Syrians, rejecting the logic of radicalization and discrimination.”25 Another example was a website called My State (Dawlati), created in January 2013 by secular activists who were aiming to promote reconciliation in the rebuilding of postAssad Syria and to “eliminate the tendency for revenge…and to increase the dialogue between all different factions of civil society.”26 Graffiti seen in the al-Tareb suburb of Aleppo summarised My State’s main objective; they read “Syria is for all, for me and for you,”27 “Syria is a mother to all its sons,”28 and “Oh you Alawi, do not hesitate, we are your family and not Bashar [Assad].”29 The reference to “state” (rather than a Syrian nation) denoted the embracing of a Syrian identity that did not necessarily exclude parallel attachments to larger communities, whether Arab or Islamic, yet also expressed a rejection of projects to dismember the Syrian state or merge it into a larger entity. The songs and slogans that projected a Syrian identity came to occupy a key place in anti-Assad protests, and were also broadly distributed online. This discourse was largely replicated by the various factions of the Syrian opposition in exile, including the Syrian National Congress and the later ­National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, whose charter called for 24

See Souriali’s website, accessed October 8, 2013. http://souriali.com/. All of Souriali’s programs are archived on this website. Souriali has some 83,400 listeners (according to its Facebook page). 25 See Souriatna’s manifesto on Souriatna’s Facebook page, accessed on October 31, 2013. https://www.facebook.com/souriatna. All the issues of Souriatna are also available at http://issuu.com/souriatna/docs. Accessed October 8, 2013. 26 “Man nahnu” (who we are?), Dawlaty website, accessed April 19, 2013. http://www.daw laty.org/. 27 “Syria is for me, for you and for all,” Dawlaty website, accessed on April 19, 2013. https:// dawlaty.org/node/2617. See also Appendix 16. 28 “Syria is a mother for all its children,” Dawlaty website, accessed on October 8, 2013. https://dawlaty.org/node/2610. 29 Rifai, fieldwork in Damascus, February-October 2012.

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preserving the unity of Syria and the creation of a “civil and democratic system that ensures equal rights for all Syrians” regardless of their religious and ethnic affiliations. It promises that “those working in state institutions would be accepted in a future Syria as long as they were not guilty of crimes against other Syrians.” In the new Syria, there would be no room for sectarianism.30 In summary, the secular old guard and youthful new guard constituted the key initial political entrepreneurs who strove to generate a sense of Syrian nationalism. However, the older generation, despite having a long record of political struggle against the Assad regime, could not develop appropriate strategies, bridge the generation gap with the youth, or enlist the support of the pious Syrians of rural areas. They were divided and lacked resources, while the regime’s depiction of them as a trusted actor it could negotiate with destroyed the credibility they had enjoyed. It was the younger generation that represented the bedrock of the peaceful mass movements, and was extremely active on the ground, which gave it much more public credibility. However, its reliance on the Internet to disseminate its message did not allow this new generation to reach the devout lower-classes of the rural areas who were inclined towards Salafism and jihadism, and where the Uprising found its most zealous militants, as Baʿathism lost traction in its former village strongholds. In an attempt to make up for this, those who came from rural areas returned to their towns and villages from where they established networks that strove to advance Syrian nationalism and to counter the unfolding sectarian discourse. However, the regime’s campaign of suppression, the predominance of the Salafis and jihadis in rural areas, and their general lack of funds stunted their effectiveness. Civil War and the Polarisation of Identity It was by no means inevitable that the Syrian conflict – in good part defined by class differences, notably the deprived against the regime-connected privileged, and with the main opposition movements also initially demanding an inclusive civic state – would, by 2012, morph into a violent sectarian war that divided Syrians along identity lines. The regime’s resort to the “security solution” – violence against the protestors – was the fatal step on the road to sectarian civil war. The opposition, in turn, demanded the fall of the regime and showed its capacity to fill the streets with continuous protests, which the regime, given the weakening of Baʿathism as an ideology and an organisation

30

Declaration by the national coalition for Syrian revolutionary and opposition forces. http://en.etilaf.org/coalition-documents/declaration-by-the-national-coalition-for-syri an-revolutionary-and-opposition-forces.html.

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and its discarding of the social contract with its former rural constituency, had little capacity to counter by mobilising supporters outside of the big cities (as it had done during the 1980s Islamic insurgency). Hence the regime perceived its survival to depend on the cohesiveness of its Alawi core (and the loyalty of other minority groups), which it promoted by painting the opposition as extreme Islamist terrorists who sought to overthrow the secular state. As the regime secured the support of minorities, who could expect retribution from Sunni jihadis if it fell, the opposition took on a more Sunni-Islamist hue and also helped sectarianise the conflict. The deployment of a Sunni identity gave the insurgents the potential to overcome class and urban-rural divisions amongst Sunnis and to fully mobilise their demographic advantage (Sunnis were 70 per cent of the population). In parallel, the regime’s violence legitimised armed self-defence by the opposition, precipitating defections from the army by Sunni soldiers and the defectors’ creation of the Free Syrian Army. Another factor that fuelled sectarianism was the influx of foreign Sunni jihadis, backed by money and guns from the Gulf. As a result, those advocating non-violent resistance were caught between the “for us or against us” mentality of both sides. Radical Islamist movements such as Jabhat al-Nusra, and later isis, took over in the north and east while the PKK-linked pyd governed Kurdish areas. The jihadis’ notions of citizenship were very different from those of the secular opposition: in isis absolute obedience to the caliph was enjoined, and both it and al-Nusra expect non-Muslims to pay a poll-tax (jizya) and to have no say in government. They, and other armed Salafi groups, such as Liwa al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, would apply the Shariʿa to non-Muslims. Of the Muslim opposition groups, only the Muslim Brotherhood accepted the equality of Muslims and non-Muslims, but it tended to be squeezed out by salafi jihadists as the conflict proceeded. As the Uprising developed into a sectarian civil war, it had a further transforming impact on identities. Remarkably, opposition and official government discourse converged to squeeze out traditional Arabism. The regime, reacting to the backing of the opposition by most trans-state Arab-Islamic discourses and Arab governments, began portraying the “reactionary” Arabs as the enemy, notably the Arab League, which, in league with the West, was trying to weaken Syria as a bastion of resistance to imperialism; it began stressing Syrian sovereignty and even a Syrian nation, with Arab references deleted from official discourse and iconic Syrian landmarks emphasised on official websites. The opposition was all lumped together as Wahhabi-backed “terrorists” attacking the secular identity of Syria, or agents of external powers seeking to weaken the country. In parallel, Alawi identification with the regime was solidified; as Rosen put it, unable to separate themselves from the regime or imagine a Syria

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without Assad, Alawis adopted slogans such as “Assad forever.” He reported that “while pundits in the West [are]…discussing the possibility of a separate Alawi state…one hears of no such thing from the Alawis themselves. Syria has long been their central project.”31 Similarly, the opposition criticised the Arabs for their failure to help the Uprising, supporting some factions at the expense of others, hence prolonging the conflict, and also for their lack of hospitality to refugees seeking asylum in Arab states. One slogan chanted by both pro- and anti-Asad crowds went: “Oh Syria, shall we cry over you or shall we cry over our Arabism that has faded away?” Thus, paradoxically, among pro-regime and secular opposition elements there was a convergence toward a Syrian identity differentiated from Arabism. This was different from the alternative Salafi/jihadi discourse, especially its trans-state form, as represented by isis, which sought to merge Syria into a wider Islamic Caliphate. At the same time, however, an increasing sectarianisation of discourse and identity arose. Opposed to a Syrian civic identity were the increasingly powerful radical Islamists leading the fight against the regime; the notion of community put forward by some of these still envisioned a Syrian Islamic community, whether the Muslim Brotherhood or jihadis such as Ahrar al-Sham, but others, most obviously isis, promoted a trans-state Sunni identity. As secular moderates were marginalised, with many either joining the armed Islamists or fleeing the country, and a trans-state Salafi discourse, with a strong anti-Shiʿi angle, penetrated the country along with the smuggling of fighters and funds from the Gulf and the wider global Sunni diaspora, the identity balance shifted to supra-state Islamic identities at the expense of secular Syrianism. At the same time, as the conflict was increasingly framed as an Alawi/Shiʿi vs. Sunni conflict, more overt Alawi/Shiʿi symbolism and an anti-Sunni discourse, notably in the deprecation of “takfiris,” appeared. These tendencies were incompatible with an inclusive notion of Syrian citizenship. However, youth movements promoting a Syrian civil identity, strongest among secular and non-Sunni educated youth, fought back, seeking to contain and reverse the increased sectarian polarisation. Thus, in December 2011 (when sectarian clashes flared up in Homs), a group of secular youths disseminated a song that denounced sectarianism and called for tolerance among Syrians: I’m going to Homs within the next two days […]. I’m going to see my brothers; the loyalist, the opponent, the protester and the security ­officer […] the radical and the secular […]. I’m going to meet the big family whose 31

Nir Rosen, “Guardians of the Throne,” Al Jazeera, October 10, 2011. http://www.aljazeera .com/indepth/features/2011/10/20111010122434671982.html.

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children grew up together…I’m going to Homs castle to write graffiti that says “we are one people, a united nation and we will cut off the hand that played with sectarianism…”32 While the popularity of such slogans decreased, a song was created in March 2013 by civil youths in Aleppo, which was aimed at countering an earlier Salafi-jihadi song, The Alawi Police (Shurta Nusairiyya), which threatened to slaughter the Alawis. The new version of the song mimics the melody of the old version but alters its lyrics radically. A brief extract of it says: We will build Syria, a civil state. The Syrian people revolted because they want freedom. Justice is our demand, neither hatred nor revenge. Despite the pain and the blood, we will remain brothers and Syria will unite us. Syria is about its colours [diversity], it is rich because of you and because of us. [So] do not allow the test of the blood to blind your belief33 This song was extensively distributed in the online realm and sung in a few protest demonstrations in Damascus and Aleppo. Furthermore, a grassroots youth campaign, Syria First, proclaimed a “revolution within the revolution,” which attempted to defend what its activists considered to be the core values of the revolution: dignity and freedom for all citizens, regardless of sect. They not only condemned regime repression but the excesses of the rebels, and assumed the mission of monitoring the revolution in order to keep it on the right path, and of working against new forms of repressive power in “liberated” areas.34 However, this brought clashes with Jabhat al-Nusra, which was intolerant of dissent within the opposition.35 Similarly, during a protest on February 8, 2013 in Sarqib district, southern Idlib, dozens of secular youth (some of them affiliated with Nabid), chanted “unity, freedom, civil state,” while waving the 32 33

34 35

For an online version of this song see “Nazil ʿala Homs” ([I’m] going to Homs), on YouTube. Accessed on October 8, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3dcHE4SjO4. For an online version of this song see “Shurta nusairiyya, al-niskha al-Halabiyya” (Alawi policemen, the Aleppo version), on YouTube. Accessed April 15, 2013. http://www.you tube.com/watch?v=HxXHvkkoZgM. Line Zouhour, “Whither the Peaceful Movement in Syria?” Jadaliyya, March 18, 2013. www .jadaliyya.com/pages/index/10616/whither-the-peaceful-movement-in-syria. Serene Assir, “Activists Struggle to be Heard amid Roar of Syria Violence,” Daily Star (Beirut), October 30, 2012. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2012/Oct-30/193205-ac tivists-struggle-to-be-heard-amid-roar-of-syria-violence.ashx##axzz2ArfSDeIh.

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r­evolutionary flag. This provoked the fundamentalists to chant loudly: “We want an Islamic Caliphate,” while waving a Salafi-jihadi flag.36 Despite identity clashes and the territorial division of the country during the Uprising, among the warring forces there exists, as Dostal argues,37 no serious domestic demand in Syria to solve the current crisis by splitting the country into ethnically homogenous smaller states. Given the entanglement of sects, this would not be possible in most areas of Syria, and even where it might be attempted, the resulting small states would lack viability and be prey to the influence of neighbouring countries. Most actors within Syria, he argues, even the religious leaders of the conflicting confessions, have consciously maintained a united Syrian national position. Indicative of the resilience of Syrian identity even in the face of supra-state Islamism is the split within the radical Islamists themselves between the al-Qaʿeda linked elements, notably the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (isis), many of whom are non-Syrian fighters, and Syrian Islamist groups, who started to see the former as outsiders perverting the revolution. Thus, the notion of Syrian citizenship carries some resonance among the latter, though not the former. It has also to be acknowledged that, in practice, the Uprising made a certain positive contribution to generating an inclusive sense of Syrian citizenship. It unleashed a powerful tradition of activism that will not be easily reversed by any subsequent regime. Freedom of discourse was unprecedented, with more than new 30 online publications promoting democracy, despite the regime crackdown on the Internet. The Uprising, in removing or weakening the heavyhanded control of the government, which had never had much tolerance for any aspect of civil society, stimulated citizen associations, and, especially where government services and security broke down, caused local neighbourhoods to organise self-defence. An unprecedented sense of solidarity developed as people shared homes, clothes, and food amidst the hundreds of thousands displaced by the fighting. With the intensification of the armed conflict, local committees became active in humanitarian relief, in what could be called an “everyday civility” that was reflective of and promoted citizenship. In some areas of Syria the tansiqiyyat (coordination and distribution committees) that 36

37

Interview with an anonymous activist in Saraqib, February 19, 2013, via Skype. See also the video of this protest, uploaded onto YouTube by rebels: “Anasir kataʾib islamiyya taqum bi-tamziq ʿalam al-thawra” (Members of Islamist Militias are Ripping Up the Revolutionary Flag). Accessed on October 8, 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player _embedded&v=R_1xdQX33pM. Jörg Michael Dostal, “Analyzing the Domestic and International Conflict in Syria: Are There Lessons from Political Science?” Syria Studies 6 (2014): 1–80.

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emerged managed to preserve the civility, openness, and accountability that are seen by many as the true counter to Asad’s regime.38 When, after mid-2012, the regime had completely lost control of large areas of the north and east of the country, the external-led opposition attempted to set up new institutions to replace defunct regime ones. According to Baczko et al.,39 these included new municipal and district councils in charge of health and education; courts, made up of fighters, clerics, and “free” lawyers; and a substitute police force. At governorate level, bodies were also established as links between communities and the Syrian National Council and National Coalition, and used their foreign funding to establish client links with “liberated” territory. Governance in areas outside regime control continued to be fragmented and contested, but could potentially constitute the institutional foundation of a transition regime able to maintain order until and after any national level settlement might be reached, either via negotiations or regime collapse. Conclusion The normative power of citizenship depends on the hegemony of identification with an inclusive state that is congruent with a national identity, as well as requiring the advance of certain material requisites, such as education and the creation of inclusive institutions. The Baʿath Party advanced the social mobilisation needed for citizenship, but its neo-patrimonial institutions could not sustain the political inclusion and economic growth needed to satisfy the citizenry, and under Bashar al-Asad the populist dimension of Baʿathist neo-patrimonialism was sacrificed to fiscal sustainability. The Syrian Uprising was an outcome of this imbalance. Initially mounted in the name of inclusive secular Syrian identity based on equal citizenship, it morphed into a sectarian civil war in which radically opposed notions of identity and citizenship came into conflict. Yet the regime’s particular version of neo-patrimonialism proved resilient enough to resist the Uprising; patrimonial solidarity prevented an elite rupture and the sacrifice of the leader as had happened in states such as Egypt, 38

39

Anand Gopal, “Welcome to Free Syria: Meeting the Rebel Government of an Embattled Country,” Harper’s Magazine, August 2012. http://harpers.org/archive/2012/08/welcome -to-free-syria/. Adam Baczko, Gilles Dorronsoro, and Arthur Quesnay, Building a Syrian State in a Time of Civil War, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 16, 2013. http://carnegieen dowment.org/2013/04/16/building-syrian-state-in-time-of-civil-war/fzrk.

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while bureaucratic institutions were also robust enough to prevent regime collapse, as had happened in Libya or Yemen. At the same time, the relative debilitation of state institutions and their loss of territorial control over about half the country indicated the exhaustion of the Baʿathist governance formula. Its secular antithesis, the non-violent movements promoting an inclusive secular Syrian “civil” citizenship, were unable to sustain their momentum once the uprising morphed into militarised civil war, and, even though the notion of civil citizenship would probably have enjoyed wide public support, its proponents were unarmed or in exile. Nevertheless, even if squeezed between regime and radical Islamists, the narrative (and to a degree practice) of a civic Syrian identity, with its long roots, persisted; indeed, the apparent value put on Syrian statehood by many, otherwise hostile, political forces is potentially symptomatic of the construction of a Syrian national identity rising out of the ashes of an exhausted Baʿathism. Bibliography Assir, Serene. “Activists Struggle to be heard amid roar of Syria Violence.” Daily Star (Beirut), October 30, 2012. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2012/ Oct-30/193205-activists-struggle-to-be-heard-amid-roar-of-syria-violence.ashx. Baczko, Adam, Gilles Dorronsoro, and Arthur Quesnay. “Building a Syrian State in a Time of Civil War,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 16, 2013. http:// carnegieendowment.org/2013/04/16/building-syrian-state-in-time-of-civil-war/ fzrk. Dostal, Jörg Michael. “Analyzing the Domestic and International Conflict in Syria: Are There Lessons from Political Science?” Syria Studies 6 (2014): 1–80. Gevin, James. Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Ghattas, Kim. “Syria’s Spontaneously Organised Protests.” BBC News Online, April 22, 2011. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13168276. Gopal, Anand. “Welcome to Free Syria: Meeting the Rebel Government of an Embattled Country.” Harper’s Magazine, August 2012. http://harpers.org/archive/2012/08/ welcome-to-free-syria/. Hinnebusch, Raymond. Authoritarian Power and State Formation in Baʿthist Syria: Army, Party and Peasant. Boulder CO: Westview, 1990. Hinnebusch, Raymond. Syria: Revolution from Above. London: Routledge, 2001. Hinnebusch, Raymond. “The Baʿth Party in Post-Baʿthist Syria: President, Party and the Struggle for ‘Reform’.” Middle East Critique 20 (2011): 109–25.

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Hinnebusch, Raymond. “Syria: from Authoritarian Upgrading to Revolution?” International Affairs 881 (2012): 95–113. Huntington, Samuel. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968. Rabinovich, Itamar. Syria under the Baʿth: The Army-Party Symbiosis. New York: Halstead Press, 1972. al-Razzaz, Munif. al-Tajriba al-Murra [The Bitter Experience]. Beirut: Dar al-­Ghandur, 1967. Rosen, Nir. “Guardians of the Throne.” Al Jazeera, October 10, 2011. http://www.al jazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/10/20111010122434671982.html. Seale, Patrick. Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Smith, Anthony. “States and Homelands: the Social and Geopolitical Implications of National Territory.” Millennium 10 (1981): 187–202. Van Dam, Nikolaos. The Struggle for Power in Syria: Sectarianism, Regionalism and Tribalism in Politics, 1961–1980. London: Croom-Helm, 1981. Van Dusen, Michael. “Downfall of a Traditional Elite.” In Political Elites and Political Development in the Middle East, edited by Frank Tachau, 115–55. Cambridge MA: Schenchman-Wiley, 1975. Wieland, Carsten. Syria: A Decade of Lost Chances: Repression and Revolution from Damascus Spring to Arab Spring. Seattle: Cune Press, 2012. Zouhour, Line. “Whither the Peaceful Movement in Syria?” Jadaliyya, March 18, 2013, www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/10616/whither-the-peaceful-movement-in-syria.

chapter 4

The Tunisian Revolution and the Question of Citizenship Sami Zemni Even though Tunisia has been the victim of two murderous attacks, one at the national Bardo-Museum that primarily targeted tourists (March 2015) and another at a popular tourist hotel in Sousse (June 2015), with the successful organisation of parliamentary and presidential elections in October and ­November 2014 the country has been described by the international press, politicians, and academics as the “only” success story of the Arab Uprisings that started in late 2010. With the growing pessimism over the consequences of the Arab Uprisings, it is not clear whether Tunisia’s success lies in the adoption of a new constitution installing political pluralism and legally enshrining citizenship rights or whether it is the outcome of the ballot boxes of the 2014 elections bringing a “secularist” political party (Nida Tounis) to power. Even so, and with no doubt, throughout the events of the Tunisian revolution many new forms of political subjectivities emerged that have had a significant impact on the path that Tunisia has followed since Ben Ali’s departure.1 “The people want the fall of the regime” and “work, freedom, national dignity,” the two most prominent slogans of the Tunisian uprising that led to the downfall of Ben Ali, signalled a strong longing for a renewed pact between rulers and ruled, between the state and the citizen. The central role that the longing for dignity played epitomised a demand for individual rights that would grant the citizen access to political freedoms as well as economic ­opportunities. As I  have argued elsewhere, the Tunisian revolution did not start with M ­ ohammed Bouazizi’s self-immolation, nor did it end with Ben Ali’s disappearance.2 The revolutionary upheaval that started in the marginalised areas of the interior of the country in late 2010 and gradually morphed 1 Benoît Challand, “Citizenship against the Grain: Locating the Spirit of the Arab Uprisings in Times of Counterrevolution,” Constellations 20 (2015): 169–187. 2 Sami Zemni, Brecht De Smet and Koenraad Bogaert, “Luxemburg on Tahrir Square: Reading the Arab Revolutions with Rosa Luxemburg’s the Mass Strike,” Antipode 45 (2009): 888–907; Sami Zemni, “The Extraordinary Politics of the Tunisian Revolution: The Process of Constitution Making,” Mediterranean Politics 20 (2015): 1–17.

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into a n ­ ational revolution constituted, following Hannah Arendt’s analysis,3 a first phase of liberation, i.e. the overthrowing of the old regime. However, with the interim-president’s historical allocution of March 3, 2011 – suspending the constitution of 1995, disbanding the former ruling party and calling for the election of a Constituent Assembly – Tunisia entered the second phase of its revolution, the phase of constitution or the creation of a new political order. While the Tunisian people stood united against Ben Ali and his regime, they discovered that they were ultimately divided over crucial issues that touch upon civil, religious, and political, as well as social and economic, rights. L­ iberal and deliberative accounts of democratisation – that lie at the basis of the transitology paradigm – assume, as Näsström states,4 that who constitutes the people is a historical question (and not a question of legitimacy), i.e. a state of affairs resulting from the contingencies of war, revolution, civil war, or internal ­power struggles. Who constitutes “the people,” who legitimately makes up those who can found a new political order, remains largely unstudied. This chapter will address the question of the legitimacy of the people because it relates to the ways Tunisians have (re-)thought and are (re-)thinking of themselves in ­relation to the building of new institutions, and more specifically in terms of what it means to be a Tunisian citizen. Long before the Tunisian revolution started Larbi Sadiki pointed out that while Tunisia is a fairly homogenous society culturally, religiously, and linguistically, it would be wrong to assume that a Tunisian demos would emerge without a fight in a post-authoritarian environment.5 More than fifty years of authoritarian rule emphasising national unity and prohibiting political division from emerging openly has compromised the very idea of pluralism, a crucial basis for the protection of rights. The foundation of “the people” that defines the boundaries of the political community, of the demos in which citizens operate as political equals, is not solely a matter of creating and legitimising specific institutions, but is as much about the creation of a shared symbolic space where different citizenship claims can be debated openly.6 The idea of (democratic) citizenship has played a crucial role in delimiting the boundaries of this symbolic space. More than a question of rights and responsibilities alone that are predicated on the legal status of abstract individuals in nation-states, the issue at hand is how, in the aftermath of Ben Ali’s rule, the “Tunisian people” have come to define 3 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1990 [1963]). 4 Sofia Näsström, “The Legitimacy of the People,” Political Theory 35 (2007): 624–658. 5 Larbi Sadiki, “The Search for Citizenship in Bin Ali’s Tunisia: Democracy versus Unity,” ­Political Studies 50 (2002): 497–513. 6 Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox (London: Verso, 2000).

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themselves, how they have – through a range of political and social acts – voiced claims and how they have embraced some forms of political subjectivity while rejecting others. This chapter first examines how “the people,” as a normative force, emerged through the revolutionary episode and how they became a hegemonic reference point for all political, social, and economic actors. It also traces the emerging definitions of citizenship back to the postcolonial order that was created by Bourguiba during the first decades of independence. As Tunisians discovered that many conflicting and divergent interests, desires, and wills co-existed under the appellation of “the people,” they gradually discovered a conflict-ridden society. Therefore, secondly, I analyse how this discovery of a plurality of voices has at times endangered the creation of a shared commonality or symbolic space binding the people together in a new body politic. The tensions were (partially) resolved by the generalised use of tunisianité, a patriotic reference used to bridge different collective identities. It is my contention that the idea of (democratic) citizenship played a crucial role in founding a political compromise that led to the adoption of a new constitution. Thirdly, I reflect on the nature of this compromise as a way of dealing democratically with different forms of divisions that cut across Tunisian society and highlight the dangers that come with it.

The Emergence of “the People” through Revolution

As the Tunisian revolution did not start with Mohammed Bouazizi’s selfimmolation, it must be highlighted that it has a genealogy, a history that can be understood as a “cumulative process of learning and resistance” that must be seen as the combination of past and present political and socio-economic struggles.7 Even so, Bouazizi’s ordeal functioned as the trigger that led to a ­local, regional uprising that, over the course of a few weeks, turned into a national revolt. One of the first rallying cries of the uprising – al-shaʿb yurid isqat al-nizam (“the people want the fall of the regime”) – suggests the emergence, through mobilisation, of the category of “the people.” First guided by local youths as well as local militants and activists from the national labour union, the (Union Générale du Travail Tunisien/ugtt),8 other 7 Habib Ayeb, “Social and Political Geography of the Tunisian Revolution: The Alfa Grass ­Revolution,” Review of African Political Economy 38 (2011): 467–479. 8 Amine Allal, “Réformes néolibérales, clientélismes et protestations en situation autoritaire: Les mouvements contestataires dans le Bassin Minier de Gafsa en Tunisie (2008),” Politique

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classes and social groups joined the opposition against Ben Ali and his regime. Through mass mobilisations of different segments of the Tunisian people, not only geographical distance (from the interior towards the coast and the ­capital) but also class divides were (temporarily) overcome. As the disaffected urban youth, urban middle classes, and even parts of the bourgeoisie joined the uprising against Ben Ali, the use of the collective noun “the people” ­became pervasive. What connected these different social groups and classes was not so much poverty, deprivation, or corruption per se but rather the shared perception of large segments of Tunisian society that Ben Ali, as head of state, the state’s institutions, and the people occupying positions in it, had betrayed the social ethic, the unwritten contract between ruler and ruled. Through claim-making in the public sphere, different sections of the Tunisian people gradually became what Saskia Sassen has called the “global street,” i.e. a space where new forms of the political and social can take shape through the claims people make on public space.9 Through this process of claim-­ making citizenship demands were voiced. Noticeably a specific “demand of state” became noticeable. The moral corruption of the regime, just as much or even more than corruption itself, played an important role in bringing “the people” together. Tunisian activists were clearly aware of this moral dimension as the narrative of Mohammed Bouazizi’s ordeal was consciously built on “white lies.” Mohammed Bouazizi was, it turned out, not a higher-educated unemployed youth, neither was he beaten by a female police officer. As Lim pointedly remarks: “By framing the Bouazizi story as a death for justice, freedom, and dignity, the movement in Sidi Bouzid had built a bridge to connect with diverse social groups beyond its locale.”10 The power of the nationwide cross-class mobilisations also injected the socio-economic grievances with more politicised themes touching upon citizenship issues and a “demand of state.” When protesters from all classes and social backgrounds shouted al-tachgil istishaq ya isabat al-sorraq (“Work is a right, O you gang of thieves”) they were not solely referring to the failing labour market and high unemployment, they were also voicing “a demand seeking inclusion, well-being and/or protection; the ‘privatization’ of the state” – in which a small group monopolises the state as if it were a private object – “was africaine 117 (2010): 107–125; Choukri Hmed and Sarah-Louise Raillard, “Abeyance Networks, Contingency and Structures: History and Origins of the Tunisian Revolution,” Revue française de science politique 62 (2012): 31–53. 9 Saskia Sassen, “The Global Street: Making the Political,” Globalizations 8 (2011): 573–579. 10 Merlyna Lim, “Framing Bouazizi: ‘White Lies’, Hybrid Network, and Collective/­Connective Action in the 2010–11 Tunisian Uprising,” Journalism 14 (2013): 8.

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seen as an intolerable hold-up […] the supreme theft is undoubtedly that of the state itself!”11 Unemployment was not only seen as an economic problem but also as a consequence of the undermining by the state’s policies of the developmental narrative that Tunisia had upheld since independence. When access to decent work became less dependent on personal merit through publicly organised education, it became closely linked to clientelistic privilege, money, and corruption. The emergence of “the people” was thus embedded in a moral economy that called into question the withering away of the Tunisian “authoritarian bargain,”12 an unwritten “deal” between the postcolonial state and the citizens in which social and economic rights were promoted while political rights were curtailed. Tunisia’s independence undermined the legitimacy of hereditary monarchy with privileged elites ruling their subjects. As artisan of the independence, Bourguiba swiftly abolished the centuries old beylicate and founded a republic in which the idea that the Tunisian people constituted a community of political equals, a demos as opposed to an ethnos defined by pre-modern kinship-ties, stood central. The notion of citizenship was clearly linked to the advent of the modern nation-state. While the 1959 constitution protected civil and political rights, Bourguiba’s efforts in nation and state building caused him to curtail many of these laudable constitutional provisions. The independence of Tunisia was based on the authority of the state to control a well-defined t­erritory – even though this remained an issue ­until the early 1960s with French military forces stationed in Bizerte and French and Algerian forces using ­Tunisian territory during the Algerian war for independence – within which solidarity and cohesion should be organised was fostered through the ­homogenisation and centralisation of a common culture. The common n ­ ational identity or imagined community that Bourguiba pushed for was meant to create a cultural basis to organise a state-organised collective solidarity. A growing perceived commonality provided the necessary trust to underpin citizenship rights and duties. However, as Bourguiba and his Neo-Destour prioritised economic development, civil and political rights were quickly dismissed while social rights were, on the contrary, stressed and ­favoured. A corporatist compromise with great political consequences (and as such for citizenship rights) was gradually put into place by Bourguiba and his Neo-Destour party. 11 12

Baccar Gherib, “Economie politique de la révolution Tunisienne: Les groupes sociaux face au capitalisme de copinage,” Revue tiers monde 212 (2012): 33. Steven Heydemann, Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World (Analysis Paper 13, The Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, 2007).

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The imperative of economic development necessitated, according to Bourguiba, an efficient state structure in which the Neo-Destour party would frame the political discussions while five national organisations representing workers (ugtt), industrialists and merchants (Union Tunisienne de l’Industrie, du Commerce et de l’Artisanat, utica), farmers (Union Nationale des ­Agriculteurs Tunisiens, unat), women (Union Nationale de la Femme Tunisienne, unft), and youth (Union Tunisienne des Organisations de Jeunesse, utoj) would allow for the representation of specific interests. The goal of this corporatist functional system of representation was to contain conflicts within society and to prevent social divisions from becoming overtly politicised. This institutional architecture was further legitimised by a narrative stressing that the imperative of development necessitated a centralised and bureaucratic state that would serve the general interest. Therefore Bourguiba and his governments constantly stressed interclass unity and the homogeneity of the Tunisian people as a means to repress the social question.13 Even during the glory days of the socialist experiment, the political elite constantly rejected any reference to class politics or class struggle. Bourguiba’s conceptualisation of citizenship thus emphasised certain entitlements and rights in the economic and social field through the meritocratic ideal of social upward mobilisation while neglecting political and civil liberties. As such, this idea of citizenship was as much about controlling and pacifying the working class (and other groups deemed “dangerous,” such as tribal groups). Whether during the socialist experiment of the 1960s (with industrialisation led by the state, collectivisation of the agricultural production, and land tenure reform) or the liberalisation of the economy starting in the early 1970s, the Tunisian state tightly controlled the economy while laying the foundations of a universal welfare state, i.e. the provision of social benefits for all ­eligible citizens. As such, the Tunisian economy remained largely protected or, as ­Camau and Geisser affirm, “autarchic.”14 It was only during the 1980s, after Tunisia had turned to the imf to avoid financial bankruptcy, that the Tunisian state gradually started withdrawing from its developmental role, creating a more globally-integrated economy,15 a policy that was later intensified with 13

14 15

Baccar Gherib, “Les classes moyennes Tunisiennes entre mythe et réalité: Éléments pour une mise en perspective historique,” L’année du Maghreb [Online], vii (2011), Online since January 1, 2013, accessed January 9, 2014. url: http://anneemaghreb.revues.org/1296; doi: 10.4000/anneemaghreb.1296. Michel Camau and Vincent Geisser, Le syndrome autoritaire: Politique en Tunisie de Bourguiba à Ben Ali (Paris: Presses de Sciences Politiques, 2003), 57. Gherib, “Les classes moyennes Tunisiennes.”

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the Free Trade Agreement signed with the eu.16 Social policies were designed as a trade-off between political stability and economic growth, from which the different social classes could benefit. The lower classes were guaranteed low food prices, progressive social policies such as free schooling, low-cost access to medical facilities, unemployment benefits, and social security provisions, while the middle classes expected that higher education would automatically lead to decently-paid jobs. The business and upper classes, in turn, were granted economic pay-offs through tax cuts and the creation of a business climate conducive to investment.17 Furthermore, a strong meritocratic discourse was promoted by political leaders as well as the educational system and media. However, under Ben Ali’s rule, this tacit trade-off gradually withered away. As Ben Ali set out to create a strong entrepreneurial class that was integrated into the channels of global capitalism (and position himself and his family firmly within this network),18 a perverse crony-capitalism emptied the social deal of its significance, as corruption became widespread. As Ben Ali was well aware of the dangers associated with liberal economic reforms he did not completely dismantle social provisions but rather refocused existing social programs and established new institutions to mitigate the negative effects of neoliberal reforms. The Tunisian Solidarity Bank (Banque Tunisienne de ­Solidarité, bts) and the National Solidarity Fund (Fond de Solidarité National, fsn) were created to eradicate poverty and to allow easier access to funds for small businesses. However, as Tsourapas brilliantly showed, these institutions rather functioned as a way to reconfigure authoritarian rule by inventing new ways of surveillance and control of the population.19 Social policies under Ben Ali were informed by the necessity of creating stability in the face of growing economic disparities between the coastal areas of the country and the interior, rising unemployment (especially among the youth), and mounting poverty. The idea of the Tunisian welfare state based on social and economic rights 16 17

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Gregory White, A Comparative Political Economy of Tunisia and Morocco: On The Outside of Europe Looking In (New York: State University of New York Press, 2001). Fadhel Biblech, Ahmed Driss and Pietro Longo, “Citizenship in Post-Awakening Tunisia: Power Shifts and Conflicting Perceptions” (Centre for Mediterranean and International Studies University l’Orientale in Naples, Democracy and Citizenship in North Africa a­ fter the Arab Awakening: Challenges for eu and us foreign policy, Euspring, 2014) http:// www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/clusters/irs/euspring/publications/. Emma Murphy, “Under the Emperor’s Neoliberal Clothes! Why the International Financial Institutions Got it Wrong in Tunisia,” in The Making of the Tunisian Revolution, ed. N. Gana, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: 2013), 35–57. Gerasimos Tsourapas, “The Other Side of a Neoliberal Miracle: Economic Reform and ­Political De-Liberalization in Ben Ali’s Tunisia,” Mediterranean Politics 18 (2013): 23–41.

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gradually shifted from a generalised, anonymous, and indiscriminate character to a personalised, individualised, and thus random approach.20 Social policy became a tool of Ben Ali’s party, the Democratic Constitutional Rally (­Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique, rcd), to control the population and rights were transformed into “‘social favors’ monopolized by the party-State, favors that it can withdraw from the moment that the beneficiary is not showing signs of gratitude and that it can channel to other individuals who are not eligible.”21 Tunisians officially enjoyed citizenship as a legal status that combined some form of more or less collectively shared national identity with social benefits but, while political membership was officially acknowledged, political rights existed only on paper. The Tunisian revolution for dignity succeeded because it was supported by nearly all social groups and classes, thus warranting the temporary use of the use of “the people.” However, very quickly the category of “the people” would unravel after Ben Ali’s disappearance. What Tunisians discovered was a society riddled with antagonistic relationships and conflict; as such, what they discovered was in fact society itself.

The Discovery of Society

The gradual unravelling of the people as a homogenous actor quickly became apparent when, after Ben Ali’s disappearance, mass mobilisations continued against the first transitional government. Revolutionary and oppositional forces (first organised in the Front of January 14) – bringing together the marginalised youth of the interior of the country, workers, and union militants as well as Islamists (mobilising for the first time as such) – opposed a political transition led “from above” and brokered between the political elites of the country. The Front called for general elections for a Constituent Assembly and the dissolution of institutions linked to the former regime (the two chambers, the Higher Council for the Judiciary, as well as Ben Ali’s party, the rcd). “Caravans of solidarity and liberty” arrived in the capital and set up camp on the Kasbah Square where the Prime Minister holds office. While this first Kasbah rally was violently broken up at the end of January 2011, mobilisations throughout the country further pressured the government to give in to the revolutionary demands. By the end of February, the Kasbah square was again taken over by 20 21

Mahmoud Ben Romdhane, Tunisie: Etat, économie et société: Ressources politiques, légitimations, régulations sociales (Tunis: Sud Editions, 2011), 259. Ben Romdhane, Tunisie, 267.

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demonstrators, who shouted “we kicked out the dictator, let’s kick out dictatorship.” However, amidst the growing instability and rising tensions between the revolutionary demands of the protestors and the constitutional legitimacy of the government, other social groups and classes started to demonstrate in another part of Tunis. While the demonstrators on the Kasbah square spoke in the name of “the people,” the mainly middle-class mobilisation at the Qobba (the dome at the sports city of al-Menzah, a middle-class neighbourhood of Tunis) also laid claim to the use of “the people,” a silent majority that wanted a return to “normality,” a return to work, and an end to what were considered the erroneous and impossible demands of the ugtt.22 With the notion of “dignity” that was central during the revolutionary moment and its aftermath, Tunisians made a clear demand for citizenship, as they wanted to be recognised as citizens, rather than as subjects. The dignity that was called for – as the opposite of humiliation under authoritarian rule  – was seen as stemming from a demand for freedom and work.23 However, a few weeks before the October 2011 elections, after the screening of Marjane Satrapi’s movie Persepolis by the private channel Nessma, the issue of Islam, and its role and place in society and the state, moved to the centre stage of public debates. Even before, during the spring of 2011, several incidents involving conflicts over freedom of expression and religious sensibilities emerged. These politics of identity, which departed from the more social and economic roots of the uprisings, dominated the electoral campaign. The public debates held in the post-Ben Ali era made it clear that there were considerably different meanings given to freedom. The physical presence of mobilised people on squares or on avenues pointed to, as Tawal-Souri witnessed in Egypt but can be applied to Tunisia, “citizens staging their right to public assembly […] the very architecture and embodiment of civicness.”24 The fragmentation of the different voices – each claiming to speak in name of “the revolution” – indicated that “the people” entered into a phase of differentiation “to conduct a war of positions over the meaning, the direction and upshot of the revolution.”25

22 23 24 25

Zemni, “The Extraordinary Politics of the Tunisian Revolution.” Malika Zeghal, “Competing Ways of Life: Islamism, Secularism, and Public Order in the Tunisian Transition,” Constellations 20 (2013): 254–274. Helga Tawil-Souri, “It’s Still About the Power of Place,” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 5 (2012): 89–90. Nasser Abourahme and May Jayyusi, “The Will to Revolt and the Spectre of the Real,” City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 15 (2011): 628.

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In this war of positions the apparent diversity of society and fragmentation of the body politic became apparent. Authoritarian rule had pre-empted the possibility of seeing that society was riddled with antagonistic relations and divided by political, economic, and cultural fault lines.26 The oneness of the Tunisian people was constantly expounded through the Bourguibist project of modernisation and development. The idea of an undivided nation was not only conveyed by this discourse but was also firmly embedded and reproduced through the state’s bureaucratic corporatist “deal” (see above) – and if need be the repressive coercion of the police – that stressed an interclass approach. After 2011, several different configurations of what constitutes the Tunisian people not only emerged but also sometimes entered into conflict with one another. These conflicting configurations do not simply refer to specific ideological formations, but rather encompass definitions of divergent “ways of life” – aptly defined by Zeghal27 as the correct beliefs and conduct appropriate for post-2011 Tunisian society. These ways of life are also embedded in historical questions over identity and state-formation as well as being riddled with complex class struggles.28 Indeed, after Ben Ali’s disappearance, political battles were not so much focused on the issue of political institutions – as a general consensus quickly emerged – but rather saw secularists defending or safeguarding what they considered their way of life, Islamists using their new found freedom to publicly display signs of religiosity, and Salafists seemingly attempting to create reactionary utopian communities where religious law would regulate all forms of social life so as to undermine the legitimacy of the state’s institutions and the transitional process itself. As such, a fierce battle over the issue of who was able to speak in name of “the people,” and how this people should be politically construed, emerged. The patriotism that was all-pervasive across the political and ideological ­spectrum was not able to defuse the danger of competing legitimacies and the emergence of debates on the “betrayal” or “treason” of the revolution and the “return of the former regime.” The redistribution of power in post-Ben Ali ­Tunisia is tied to different constituencies that are linked to specific trajectories of mobilisation in the state- and nation-building efforts in postcolonial Tunisia. 26

27 28

Jocelyn Dakhlia, “L’an I de la révolution Tunisienne ou les résurgences d’un passé qui divise,” Jadaliyya, December 5, 2012. Available at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/ index/8804/l’an-i-de-la-révolution-tunisienne-ou-les-résurgen. Zeghal, “Competing Ways of Life.” Fabio Merone, “Enduring Class Struggle in Tunisia: The Fight for Identity beyond Political Islam,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42 (2014): 74–87.

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The fault line running between secularists and Islamists is not as clearcut as is often assumed. The (mostly urban) middle classes that served as the ­major backbone of the rule of the Neo-Destour and constituted the bulk of the ­nationalist elite are politically represented by secular (but not necessarily irreligious) political formations that stress the need to preserve what are considered “historic achievements” (such as the separation of state and religion, women’s rights, and the republican order). The official narrative of the Tunisian nation – defined by Bourguiba and largely reproduced with some nuances by Ben Ali – as a homogenous nation embedded in Arab-Islamic history as well as in a pre-Islamic Mediterranean past and open to elements of Western civilisation and modernity came into conflict with societal realities that were and are riddled with competing narratives. The creation of a national myth served two purposes. Firstly, it provided the national community with a feeling that it was firmly embedded and grounded in a history, thus creating a sense of solidarity between the generations. Secondly, the Bourguibian myth had a moralising role by inculcating the population with a sense of obligation towards that past and ancestors.29 The authoritarian manner in which this national myth was constituted, defined, and reproduced through political i­nstitutions, the ­educational system, and the media authoritatively imposed an identity by indoctrination and repression as any divergent or deviant n ­ arrative was prohibited. It is not only Islamists or Salafists who have challenged this narrative. Several parties, such as the Congress for the Republic (Congres pour la République, cpr), have revived the memory of Salah Ben Youssef, a historical Neo-Destour leader and challenger of Bourguiba, and have used the new freedoms to assert themselves and claim a place in the new political system. Those reviving Ben Youssef’s opposition to Bourguiba – by stressing the Arab-Islamic identity of the country – refer less to a specific ideological set of ideas on the definition of the character of the Tunisian people, than to the notion of dissidence, the right to counter the elitist character of the Neo-Destourian and later rcd elitism. For Bourguiba and the Neo-Destourian elite, the concept of the people was an important means to mobilise the masses against the French protectorate but was in need of the “enlightened” representation and education of a progressive party to transcend the possible re-emergence of what Bourguiba considered as primordial allegiances based on regional affiliation or kinship.30 It is not a coincidence then, that the middle classes, who had been­ 29 30

David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press) Online edition: http:// www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0198293569.001.0001/acprof--‐9780198293569. Camau and Geisser, Le syndrome autoritaire.

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hitherto kept outside the realm of power, strived to radicalise the revolutionary ­experience by ­countering the political elites’ narrative by referring to Arab-Islamic identity. In this, they were joined in part by the Islamists, mainly represented by Ennahda. For Ennahda, the revolution signalled the possibility for the Tunisian people to reconnect with their “authentic” Arab and Islamic past. ­Islamists stressed the fact that Bourguibism alienated the nation from its own culture; Ennahda’s project is ultimately one of cultural authenticity and ­reform rather than a religious endeavour.31 The call for authenticity constitutes the basis of a conservative modernity where “collective consciousness and cultural reformation are […] the active agents of progress, rather than individual consciousness.”32 Salafists mostly reject this project, advocating instead the ­re-activation of a reactionary utopia that was made possible by the revolution and through the clear rejection of modernity – seen as imported from and imposed by the West to subjugate Islam. Finally, one cannot neglect to mention the possibilities that the newly-found freedoms also offered for more “invisible minorities,” as Poussel33 showed how Amazigh, Jewish, and “Black” minorities made claims to recognise their role in Tunisian history. The emergence of these “collective archaeologies”34 through which different groups voiced their “want” for a history that could be imposed by the political elites but should emanate from within the nation itself, bear directly on questions pertaining to citizenship. By offering varying accounts of what the Tunisian people is or should be, these different narratives also convey specific ideas about what the place and role of the individual as a citizen should be. The danger, obviously, resided in the fact that amidst the constitution of a new political order, these divergent narratives – supported by different constituencies – seemed to polarise the political debates.

La Tunisianité: Patriotism or Canvas for Citizenship Claims?

With the political murders of Chokri Belaïd and Mohammed Brahmi, in February and August of 2013 respectively, the Tunisian transitional process came 31 32 33

34

Nadia Marzouki, “The Politics of Religious Freedom: Nahda’s Return to History,” The Immanent Frame. Available at http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2012/04/30/nahdas-return-to-history/. Ibid. Stéphanie Pouessel, “Les marges renaissantes: Amazigh, Juif, Noir: Ce que la révolution a changé dans ce ‘petit pays homogène par excellence’ qu’est la Tunisie,” L’Année du Maghreb (2012): 143–160. Guillaume Mazeau and Giedre Sabaseviciute, “Archéologies révolutionnaires: Regards croisés sur la Tunisie et l’Égypte (2011–2013),” L’Année du Maghreb (2014): 19–39.

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under heavy pressure. Amidst growing political polarisation and increasing security concerns, the political debates witnessed constant appeals to national unity and the necessity of a national consensus. The idea of tunisianité gradually but forcefully emerged as the inescapable horizon of political debates, as fears over where the Tunisian revolution was heading instilled a sense of national duty within the political actors and large parts of civil society. The idea that the revolution was somehow under attack (based on real or imaginary threats) necessitated consensus and unity, and led to a discursive national pride that materialised in the omnipresence of the Tunisian flag in the public realm. This flag-waving exhibition of a patriotic sense of duty, obviously, could not obscure the fact that political conflict over legitimacy and over what ­exactly constituted the “national interest” continued to rage. Tunisianité is an ambiguous and multifocal patriotic narrative that refers to the specificity of Tunisia, its history, and identity; an assemblage of ideas ­believed to be the defining core of a perennial Tunisian identity that is defined by its realism, rejection of any form of radicalism, and moderation. As Béji Caïd Essebsi, the newly elected president states, tunisianité points to the fact that Tunisia does not recognise itself: [I]n any political, ideological or religious extremism, just like it rejects class struggle or proletarian dictatorship and rejects tribal or social fragmentation. Tunisianité is a culture of moderation, of realism and consensus. We draw from Islam the idea of “nation of the middle” which seeks to bring together and unify and favours persuasion rather to coercion. Tunisianité rests on the principle of national unity, natural solidarity and voluntary cohesion of all the nation’s social layers. It rejects all dogmatisms and cultivates the spirit of tolerance and the sense of relativity.35 Tunisianité functions, then, simultaneously as a narrative on Tunisian identity but also as an admonition that can be used in times of crisis. This became very clear during the major mobilisations during the summer of 2013 when, after Mohammed Brahmi’s assassination, society seemed divided between the elected parties defending their electoral and democratic legitimacy and oppositional forces calling for the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly based on a certain understanding of tunisianité that the ruling Troika would have betrayed. Ennahda, fearing an Egyptian scenario (General al-Sisi capturing power on the back of the Tamarrod-campaign), was gradually forced or accepted engagement in discussions with all political parties in order to break the stalemate. This was made possible by the work of the politically influential 35

Béji Caïd Essebsi, Habib Bourguiba: Le bon grain et l’ivraie (Tunis: Sud Editions, 2009).

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labour Union (ugtt), joined by the utica, the Tunisian League for Human rights, and the Lawyers’ Association. These civil forces were able to pressurise all parties to engage in a national dialogue that ultimately would lead to a ­historical compromise as reflected in the adoption of a new constitution in January 2014. In the national dialogue, all parties agreed that no-one could claim to speak in name of all the people and thus (gradually and not without conflict) ­accepted the idea that tolerance, pluralism, and freedom were necessary pre-­conditions for a political solution to the crisis. In this sense, tunisianité seemed to create some form of commonality between the political actors and civil society movements, a sense of a shared symbolic space. This space made the search for a political compromise possible as communication between the political and civil society movements gradually turned the growing antagonistic relationships into agonistic ones. In this shared symbolic space the idea of citizenship was important. As no political formation was able to impose its worldview or ideology on the others, the idea of a universal citizenship protecting civic, political and economic rights became prominent, as reflected in the adoption of the constitution. The constitution that was approved by an overwhelming majority in the Constituent Assembly reflects the search for a compromise between the different political forces. Politically, the adoption of the new constitution signals a historic compromise between the older elites that have ruled Tunisia since independence and newer Islamist elites that had remained largely outside the power realm. Legally, the new constitution – while not completely resolving the possible tensions between individual freedoms and religious rights – ­undoubtedly enshrines civil and political liberties as well as social and economic rights. While it firmly recognises citizenship as one of the pillars of the civil nature of the State (alongside the will of the people and the primacy of the law), possible divergent readings of the constitution remain possible. A major breakthrough from and an important difference with the former constitution is that the new constitution protects citizenship rights in an absolute manner while in the 1959 constitution these rights were bounded by ordinary law.36 The constitution is “characterized (at least on paper) by limited executive powers, parliamentary oversight, public accountability, checks and ­balances and respect for human rights and the rule of law.”37

36 37

Biblech, Driss and Longo, “Citizenship in Post-Awakening Tunisia.” Duncan Pickard, “Prospects for Implementing Democracy in Tunisia,” Mediterranean Politics 19 (2014): 259–264.

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The new constitution safeguards the freedom of the press, freedom of expression, assembly, and association that are considered by most Tunisians the most important acquis of the revolution thus far. Freedom of association has not only led to the creation of many new political parties but even more so to the creation of thousands of new civil society organisations. The freedom of the press has decriminalised defamation but is still in need of a general legal framework or press code that would regulate an independent media landscape. Women’s rights were not touched upon.38 The constitution refers to male and female citizens that are equal before the law and Article 20 even speaks explicitly about gender equality. However, as the Personal Status Code of 1956 regulates many aspects of family and women’s rights (marriage, divorce, paternity, and inheritance) some contradictions still remain. While Tunisian women have enjoyed many rights that protect them in relation to their spouses, they still inherit half of what male sons do. This has led to harsh debates between secularists and Islamists within the Constituent Assembly without resolving the issue. Even more controversial were the debates on religious freedoms. Article 6 declares that the state is the guardian of religion and of the “sacred.” The state must guarantee freedom of conscience and belief; it must protect and enable the free exercise of religious practices and ensure that mosques and other places of worship remain politically neutral. The question, obviously, is what exactly the sacred and its protection come to mean, as it is very possible that the simple fact that one openly shows his or her unbelief could be seen as a threat to the “sacred.” The article reflects the debates that Tunisians have faced since Ben Ali’s departure, and while it clearly supports religious liberalism, ambiguities or practical impediments remain. According to official statements by the government, about 10 per cent of mosques are run by ­Salafist preachers that do not recognise the tutelage of the Ministry of Religion or the rest of the government. Also, Salafists have, on several occasions, used violence against other Muslim currents as, for example, many popular Sufi shrines were attacked and/or destroyed. For secular forces, the civil nature of the state clearly encompasses the idea of a separation of the political and religious spheres, while some Islamists tend instead to read the article as the requirement that politicians do not hold any religious office. For Ennahda there is no contradiction in d­ efending the principle of separating State and Church while 38

On the conflictual relations between the older women’s movement and Islamist women’s movements see Loes Debuysere, “The Women’s Movement in Tunisia: Fault Lines in a Post-Revolutionary Context,” Mediterranean Politics, online ahead of print, doi: 10.1080/13629395.2015.1092292.

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s­ imultaneously striving for a society that is imbued with religion and regulated through ­Islamic norms. What this succinct discussion of the constitution makes clear is that rather than a generalised consensus, the constitution is more a compromise between political formations that hold different conceptualisations of society. Tunisianité might have formatted the constitutional process in such a way as to ­broker a historical compromise between the nationalist elites and middle classes hitherto controlling the Tunisian polity and the conservative newer middle classes tied to Ennahda. Salafists, mainly but certainly not exclusively represented within the lower social strata, remained and remain largely ­outside the scope of this new social contract. Tunisianité not only fostered the possibility of ­dialogue leading to compromise but also served as a way to exclude. Salafism, for example, while having a Tunisian reality on the ground and local historical roots, is more and more depicted as an imported religiosity that is not an element of the Tunisian identity. The Tunisian constitution, like any constitution for that matter, not only serves to confer rights to citizens but also entails some sort of closure that marginalises or excludes certain narratives, identities, or claims of parts of “the people.”39 The constitution of the people, then, should not be seen as a historical event, as Näsström stresses,40 that once and for all defines what the people is, but rather as an ongoing claim. The conflicts that still exist over what ­constitutes the Tunisian people and thus over what citizenship means are still ongoing, and it needs to be seen whether the constitution can serve as a platform to democratically engage with these conflicts or rather as a constraining framework making divergent claims impossible.

Conclusion: Inclusion and Exclusion Underneath Consensus?

With the legislative and presidential elections of November and December 2014 Tunisia seems to have succeeded in implementing political pluralism and firmly enshrining citizenship civil, political, and economic rights in the newly adopted constitution. However, the deadly terrorist attacks that hit the country have already led to the re-emergence of authoritarian reflexes. Just as in the us and several European countries, the fight against terrorism has led to the quick approval of a new anti-terrorism law that impinges on the p ­ rivacy of 39 Stefano M. Torelli, Fabio Merone, and Francesco Cavatorta, “Salafism in Tunisia: ­Challenges and Opportunities for Democratization,” Middle East Policy 19 (2012): 140–154. 40 Näsström, “The Legitimacy of the People,” 645.

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the citizens as well as their general freedoms, and gives the police and other security services ample powers without any transparent means to hold these services accountable. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that rumours about the use of torture against presumed terrorists has become widespread again. Nevertheless, the political compromise that was brokered has changed the political rules of the game. While many Tunisian politicians and civil ­society organisations support the harsh measures against terrorism and presumed terrorists, many others are voicing their concern and demanding the accountability of the state and its institutions. Unlike Ben Ali’s repression against the Islamists in the early 1990s, today’s president and government are constantly being criticised by watchdogs who want to defend the rule of law and the rights of citizens. This is the natural consequence of the revolutionary events that chased Ben Ali from power and installed a new political regime. Undoubtedly, under the authoritarian rules of Bourguiba and Ben Ali the state was the sole generator of a narrative of interclass national unity that was based on a specific discourse of modernisation, development, and identity that prohibited any alternative imagining of the political community. After Ben Ali’s disappearance and the temporary emergence of the collective noun “the people” as a political force, the discovery of a conflict-ridden society led to political polarisation and issues pertaining to the important question of who was/is the Tunisian people. The search for a common political language that could preserve a shared political arena in which to debate the conflicts over who “the people” are proved that the assumption that a hitherto-constituted Tunisian ethnos would automatically lead to a demos of citizens was false or, at least, insufficient.41 Citizenship rights that were heavily discussed within the constitution-making process of the Constituent Assembly, as well as in civil society organisations, made clear that different and often conflicting ideas of how to legalise political subjectivities were widespread. The concept of tunisianité served then as a unifying idea to bridge opposing and different views on citizenship. It succeeded in brokering a political compromise that installs, with the adoption of the constitution, political pluralism and a regime of rights that are firmly embedded within universal conceptualisations of human rights. However, with the constitution, a form of closure also emerges; i.e. a certain definition of who does and who does not belong to the Tunisian nation. Mainly Salafists have, as they oppose the nascent legal and political order, based on a religiously-inspired reading of what kind of relationship between state and society, and between the individual and the state, should exist. Habermas warns us that “(l)egal orders as wholes are also ‘ethnically imbued’ in that they 41

Sadiki, “The Search for Citizenship,” 508.

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interpret the universalistic content of the same constitutional principles in different ways, namely, against the background of the experiences that make up national history and in light of a historic prevailing tradition, culture and form of life.”42 Therefore, it remains to be seen whether tunisianité will engender a tradition of political pluralism or rather serve as a new authoritarian discourse on unity that hampers pluralism and diversity so as to pre-empt any alternative political project. Bibliography Abourahmen, Nasser, and May Jayyusi. “The Will to Revolt and the Spectre of the Real.” City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 15 (2011): 625–630. Allal, Amin. “Réformes néolibérales, clientélismes et protestations en situation autoritaire: Les mouvements contestataires dans le Bassin Minier de Gafsa en Tunisie (2008).” Politique africaine 117 (2010): 107–125. Arendt, Hannah. On Revolution. London: Penguin Books, 1990 [1963]. Ayeb, Habib. “Social and Political Geography of the Tunisian Revolution: The Alfa Grass Revolution.” Review of African Political Economy 38 (2011): 467–479. Ben Romdhane, Mahmoud. Tunisie: Etat, économie et société: Ressources politiques, ­légitimations, régulations sociales. Tunis: Sud Editions, 2011. Biblech, Fadhel, Ahmed Driss and Pietro Longo. “Citizenship in Post-Awakening ­Tunisia: Power Shifts and Conflicting Perceptions.” Centre for Mediterranean and International Studies University l’Orientale in Naples, Democracy and Citizenship in North Africa after the Arab awakening: Challenges for EU and US Foreign Policy (Euspring) (1914), http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/clusters/irs/ euspring/publications/. Accessed January 27, 2015. Camau, Michel, and Vincent Geisser. Le syndrome autoritaire: Politique en Tunisie de Bourguiba à Ben Ali. Paris: Presses de Sciences Politiques, 2003. Challand, Benoît. “Citizenship against the Grain: Locating the Spirit of the Arab Uprisings in Times of Counterrevolution.” Constellations 20 (2013): 169–187. Choukri, Hmed, and Sarah-Louise Raillard. “Abeyance Networks, Contingency and Structures: History and Origins of the Tunisian Revolution.” Revue française de s­ cience politique (English) 62 (2012): 31–53. DOI: 10.3917/rfspe.625.0031. Dakhlia, Jocelyn. “L’an I de la révolution Tunisienne ou les résurgences d’un passé qui Divise.” Jadaliyya, December 5, 2012. Available at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/ index/8804/l’an-i-de-la-révolution-tunisienne-ou-les-résurgen. Accessed January 27, 2015. 42

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Debuysere, Loes. “The Women’s Movement in Tunisia: Fault Lines in a PostRevolutionary Context.” Mediterranean Politics. Online ahead of print, DOI: 10.1080/13629395.2015.1092292. Essebsi, Béji Caid. Habib Bourguiba: Le bon Grain et l’Ivraie. Tunis: Sud Editions, 2009. Gherib, Baccar. “Les classes moyennes Tunisiennes entre mythe et réalité: Éléments pour une mise en perspective historique.” L’année du maghreb [Online], VII | 2011. Online since January 1, 2013, accessed January 9, 2014: http://anneemaghreb.revues .org/1296; DOI: 10.4000/anneemaghreb.1296. Gherib, Baccar. “Economie politique de la révolution Tunisienne: Les groupes sociaux face au capitalisme de copinage.” Revue tiers monde 212 (2012): 19–36. Heydemann, Steven. Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World. Analysis Paper 13. The Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, 2007. Lim, Merlyna. “Framing Bouazizi: ‘White Lies’, Hybrid Network, and Collective/­ Connective Action in the 2010–11 Tunisian Uprising.” Journalism 14 (2013): 921–941. Marzouki, Nadia. “The Politics of Religious Freedom: Nahda’s Return to History.” The Immanent Frame. Available at http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2012/04/30/nahdas-return -to-history/, 2013. Accessed January 27, 2015. Mazeau, Guillaume, and Giedre Sabaseviciute. “Archéologies révolutionnaires: Regards croisés sur la Tunisie et l’Égypte (2011–2013).” L’Année du Maghreb 10 (2014): 19–39. Merone, Fabio. “Enduring Class Struggle in Tunisia: The Fight for Identity beyond ­Political Islam.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42 (2014): 74–87. Murphy, Emma. “Under the Emperor’s Neoliberal Clothes! Why the International ­Financial Institutions Got it Wrong in Tunisia.” In The Making of the Tunisian R ­ evolution, edited by Nouri Gana, 35–57. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. Näsström, Sofia. “The Legitimacy of the People.” Political Theory 35 (2007): 624–658. Pickard, Duncan. “Prospects for Implementing Democracy in Tunisia.” Mediterranean Politics 19(2) (2014): 259–264. Pouessel, Stéphanie. “Les marges renaissantes: Amazigh, Juif, Noir. Ce que la révolution a changé dans ce ‘petit pays homogène par excellence’ qu’est la Tunisie.” L’Année du Maghreb 8 (2012): 143–160. Sadiki, Larbi. “The Search for Citizenship in Bin Ali’s Tunisia: Democracy versus Unity.” Political Studies 50 (2002): 497–513. Sassen, Saskia. “The Global Street: Making the Political.” Globalizations 8 (2011): 573–579. Tawil-Souri, Helga. “It’s Still About the Power of Place.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 5 (2012): 86–95. Torelli, Stefano M., Fabio Merone, and Francesco Cavatorta. “Salafism in Tunisia: ­Challenges and Opportunities for Democratization.” Middle East Policy 19 (2012): 140–154.

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Tsourapas, Gerasimos. “The Other Side of a Neoliberal Miracle: Economic Reform and Political De-Liberalization in Ben Ali’s Tunisia.” Mediterranean Politics 18 (2013): 23–41. White, Gregory. A Comparative Political Economy of Tunisia and Morocco: On the ­Outside of Europe Looking In. New York: State University of New York Press, 2001. Zeghal, Malika. “Competing Ways of Life: Islamism, Secularism, and Public Order in the Tunisian Transition.” Constellations 20 (2013): 254–274. Zemni, Sami. “From Socio-Economic Protest to National Revolt: The Labor Origins of the Tunisian Revolution.” In The Making of the Tunisian Revolution: Contexts, Architects, Prospects, edited by Nouri Gana, 127–146. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. Zemni, Sami. “The Extraordinary Politics of the Tunisian Revolution: The Process of Constitution Making.” Mediterranean Politics 20 (2015): 1–17. Zemni, Sami, Brecht De Smet, and Koenraad Bogaert, “Luxemburg on Tahrir Square: Reading the Arab Revolutions with Rosa Luxemburg’s the Mass Strike.” Antipode 45 (2013): 888–907.

chapter 5

Patronage and Democratic Citizenship in Morocco James Sater Introduction Most political analysts and observers of Morocco’s political system agree that together with clientelism, political and economic patronage has been at the heart of Morocco’s post-independence political system. A common assertion would further maintain that the presence of patronage networks is a strong impediment to democratic citizenship, an assertion that this chapter aims to investigate by analysing systems of patronage and their role in the events surrounding Morocco’s version of the Arab spring. In scholarship on Morocco from the 1990s, such patronage systems have been analysed within the framework of “liberalised autocracies”1 and a recent comparative contribution on the Maghreb has raised the interesting question as to why, among the North African liberalised autocracies, Tunisia and Egypt were much more vulnerable to mass mobilisation compared to Morocco and Algeria. A related focus is why Morocco and Algeria were able to make arrangements with the contestants without seriously eroding their power base.2 Taking these questions as a point of departure, I will argue in this chapter that the Moroccan kingdom not only enjoyed more intrinsic legitimacy due to religion and history than other societies in the Maghreb but that crucially, it was also able to build new systems of patronage inside liberalised civil society that offered opportunities for incremental political changes under the auspices of the old, undemocratic regime. This has enabled the system to swiftly move to counter any potential threats by issuing a new constitution in record time, yet it has its origins in how civil society has been structured in networks of patronage. Yet, while pointing out the continuity of clientelism and patronage and how this impedes democratic citizenship, it is equally important to analyse and reveal some underlying shifts in patronage systems that allow for incremental changes to occur. As I argue in this chapter, it has been within 1 Daniel Brumberg, “Democratization in the Arab World: The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy,” Journal of Democracry 13 (2002): 56–68. 2 George Joffe, “The Arab Spring in North Africa: Origins and Prospects,” The Journal of North African Studies 16 (2011): 511.

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shifting zones of patronage that instances of political changes were initiated, which allowed the state to reap the benefits of political propositions and constantly reinforce its liberalised autocratic core. This argument explains why the extra-ordinary February 20 Movement, Morocco’s country-wide protest network, was ultimately unable to challenge the monarchical system, unlike similar movements in Tunisia and Egypt. It also explains the characteristics of the coalition of those that were excluded from patronage and that formed the basis of the February 20 Movement. Furthermore, examining such patronage networks aims to illustrate that a prevailing argument about royal manoeuvring and ultimately autocracy, equating royal tactics to “outfoxing” of the opposition misses an important point about political structure and the issue of democratic citizenship.3 In addition to tactics, it has been the structure of civil society towards the regime and its inclusion in politically significant networks of patronage that severely hampered the appeal of the February 20 Movement. While the February 20 Movement called for country-wide mass protests in favour of truly democratic reforms, such politically significant networks of patronage focused on the monarchical initiative to draft a new constitution that would give Morocco another veneer of democratic governance. The focus of this paper therefore aims to fill a lacunae in research on liberalised autocracies post Arab spring. As Joffe explains, We need to understand the processes by which precursor movements, trapped within liberalized autocracy consensus, were able to overturn it by breaking through the constraints it imposed to become social movements capable of contesting regime legitimacy and regime control.4 One aspect of recent research on the February 20 Movement, inspired by social movement theory, has been its framing strategies as a way of overcoming constraints that the liberalised autocracy consensus imposed on the scope of contestation.5 From the above focus it also appears useful to analyse shifting patronage systems to explain the relative ease with which the regime was able to retain control, thereby avoiding challenges to its authority that would have made concessions less effective than they were. Yet, while part of this argument relies on the broadening of public debate and the inclusion of new 3 Ahmed Benchemsi, “Morocco: Outfoxing the Opposition,” Journal of Democracy 23 (2012): 57–69. 4 Joffe, “The Arab Spring,” 517. 5 Anja Hoffmann and Christoph König, “Scratching the Democratic Façade: Framing Strategies of the 20 February Movement,” Mediterranean Politics 18 (2013): 1–22.

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groups as significant networks of patronage, I also aim to suggest that the ability to oppose from outside of patronage systems have significantly shrunk in recent years, leaving some labour unions, fringe Islamists, and unemployed graduates as the only organised groups. This is because Morocco’s specificity partially consists of an increasing royal domination over both a political party system and the media, through which it diminished the formerly more institutionalised, if limited party opposition. While new social media appear to provide for an emergent “subaltern” public sphere, as observed by Maghraoui and Benchemsi in recent contributions,6 this chapter suggests that the unstructured and virtual nature of such social media activism has had little impact on the political processes initiated by the Arab Spring. In fact, social media, by making politically motivated activism individualised and unprotected, made individuals quite vulnerable to legal prosecution. The persecution of Facebook authors and online rappers, such as Fouad Mourtada and Mourad Belghawat are cases in point. Patronage, Clientelism and Democratic Citizenship In his discussion of patronage in this volume, Robert Springborg distinguishes between deep and instrumental clientelism in the Middle East. Deep clientelism has traditionally come to be most associated with culture in the Middle East, particularly in rural areas where individuals and groups relate to each other through the exchange of political, social, and (potentially) militant loyalty for material wealth.7 This type of clientelism is well-developed in weak states, uncertain and transitional economic markets, and remote rural areas, in which there is a heightened sense of vulnerability vis-à-vis changes and centralised politics especially in the early periods of state and nation-building.8 In contrast to such cultural and organic clientelism, state centred approaches have since the 1970s focused on how state elites and modernising autocrats, used state resources to create alliances and, consequently, their own clienteles and networks of patronage, often in opposition to traditional patrons whose 6 Driss Maghraoui,, “Constitutional Reform in Morocco: Between Consensus and Subaltern Politics,” The Journal of North African Politics 16 (2011): 679–699. Ahmed Benchemsi, “Don’t be Fooled by Appearances, Liberal Values are Spreading in the Arab World,” (The Middle East Institute, December 9, 2014), accessible at http://www.mei.edu/content/article/ don%E2%80%99t-be-fooled-appearances-liberal-values-are-spreading-arab-world. 7 Hisham Sharabi, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society (Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1992). 8 An argument that Lisa Anderson developed in her theory of monarchism. See Lisa Anderson, “Dynasts and Nationalists: Why Monarchies Survive,” in Middle East Monarchies: The Challenge of Modernity, ed. Joseph Kostinger (Boulder, Co. Lynne Rienner, 2000), 53–70.

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resources were consequently challenged. Such clientelism has been called instrumental. It operates outside of organic social relationships; instead elites use it to achieve particular objectives.9 A related theoretical question concerns the impact of such patronage on the development of democratic citizenship. A substantive understanding of citizenship beyond formal voting and election typical of liberalised autocracies involves an active involvement in political decision-making and the ability to contribute to the evolution of the polity through non-formal means, i.e. in civil society and the public. Both instrumental and deep clientelism prevent, at least in part, the development of democratic citizenship, the first by controlling public activities and shaping them according to the political elite’s interest, the second by privatising and monetising the relationship between political elites and citizens, turning the latter into a relationship between clients and subjects. While this tendency to transform citizenship relationships may be adverse for the development of democratic citizenship, patronage networks may also be a source of political access to the decision-making process, ultimately providing a source of socio-political cohesion that can be quite beneficial for a more dynamic, and inclusive political system.10 While this debate may be primarily theoretical in nature, this empirical chapter aims to investigate this issue and evaluate if a more positive view on patronage and democratic citizenship is warranted. This chapter will first discuss the post-colonial development of patronage systems, before engaging in a discussion of two cases of political patronage: women members of parliament and civil society’s inclusion in political parties. The purpose of these case studies is to show a two-sided argument about how such patronage has prevented the development of democratic citizenship in Morocco. On one hand, the inclusion of new groups and the extension of patronage has allowed for a larger degree of real and perceived public freedom, and for more inclusion of a large number of minorities in the polity. Arguably, the protection of individual rights and therefore the potential for democratic citizenship has greatly increased. On the other hand, the inclusion of new groups and shifting patronage has increased the stakes that a larger number of politically significant actors have in the monarchical system and the liberalised autocracy it represents. Therefore, one of the particularities of Morocco’s liberalised autocracy has been that the February 20 Movement was unable to form a broad alliance that reached into political and civil society that could have realised the potential for democratic citizenship. 9 See chapter 15 by Robert Springborg in this volume. 10 Ibid.

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Citizenship and Patronage in the Post-Colonial Moroccan State

Scholarship on Morocco has long emphasised the neo-patrimonial aspects of the country’s political system in which clientelism, paternalism, and the select use of coercion served to divide a diverse traditional, technocratic, and modernising elite. Centred on the monarchical institution and its network epitomised in the Moroccan term makhzen, the state has been able to develop multiple networks of patron-client relations that encompass political, social, and economic actors,11 to the extent that the post-colonial state has become a structure that has created a field for alliance building for the King. Throughout the post-colonial period the King has maintained a large number of client groups by using appointments to high-ranking positions in the civil service, or in the armed forces as leverage. While he often delegated this authority to ministers and councillors, such delegation of political authority is similar to the distribution of economic rewards, in that it fulfils the purpose of keeping a secular clientele under control.12 Such patron-client networks have been compounded by a paternalistic political discourse. As observed by Waterbury, “the King consistently tries to promote the notion that all segments of the élite constitute a large family, subject to political differences, but essentially united in approval of the direct role of the monarchy in politics.”13 In public addresses, King Hassan ii, the father of the current King Mohamed vi, frequently addressed the people as “my dear children” and many traditional political practices, such as the hand kiss or the traditional slaughtering of a ram during Eid Al Adha, evoke paternalistic relations between the monarch and the people.14 11

See for instance: William I. Zartman, Morocco: Problems of New Power (New York: Oceana, 1971); Political Elites in Arab North Africa, ed. William I. Zartman (London: Longman, 1982); The Political Economy of Morocco, ed. William I. Zartman (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1987); Jean Leca, “Réformes Institutionnelles et Légitimation du Pouvoir au Maghreb,” in Développements politiques au Maghreb: Aménagements institutionnels et processus électoraux, ed. Jean Leca (Paris: cnrs, 1979). See also Jean Leca and Yves Schemeil, “Clientelisme et patrimonialisme dans le monde Arabe,” International Political Science Review 4 (1983): 455–495. 12 John Waterbury, The Commander of the Faithful. The Moroccan Political Elite: A Study of Segmented Politics (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), 152. 13 Waterbury, Commander of the Faithful, 149. 14 For a detailed analysis of various cultural practices and power relationship in Morocco, see In the Shadow of the Sultan: Culture, Power, and Politics in Morocco, ed. Rahma Bourqia and Susan Gilson Miller (Cambridge, ma: Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1999).

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This type of paternalistic patronage has been reinforced with the help of the security forces. Hassan ii, as Crown Prince already the head of the Royal Armed Forces, extensively built up the security forces, which rendered the state a model of neo-patrimonial rule. In popular belief and culture, the monarchical state has been associated to Dar al-Mulk, or house of coercion. Questioning of the monarch’s role and championing the sovereignty of the people, even if nominally legal under Morocco’s post-independence constitutions, could easily lead to prison sentences. In 1959–60, the former Prime Minister Abderrahman Youssoufi (1998–2002) was imprisoned. Yet, coercion was never used alone: the King also had control over the judiciary and was himself the judge of last resort (if only through his regular amnesties). This rendered him, in the words of Waterbury, not just the highest religious figure but also the “dispenser of justice.” Political opponents, after having been condemned, could always hope to be pardoned by the King in order to be re-integrated into the “national family.” Yet, as King Hassan famously warned: If they miss the opportunity, if they persist in error and believe that clemency is a door open widely to them at all moments, I warn them against the unfortunate consequences of their poor intentions and manoeuvres, and I call their attention to the fact that Our clemency is equalled only by Our firmness.15 The duality of “punishments” and “clemency” went beyond sticks and carrots, as they not only underscored the discretionary powers of the King, but also served to make opposition strategies ineffective, leading to internal divisions and splitting opposition political parties.16 This can be considered the core of Moroccan instrumental patronage and a unique feature of its political system, as divisive (and changing) elements of Moroccan society could strengthen the role of the absolute monarch as “referee,” the desired role of the King. The King is, in the words of Jean-Francois Clement, “the center of a concentric cybernetic

15 16

King Hassan, quoted in Waterbury, The Commander of the Faithful, 150. According to Susan E. Waltz, “The quality of arbitrariness frequently attached to both reprisals and measures of clemency have served to reinforce an object lesson about the King’s raw powers. Disjointed reprisals and unexpected amnesties throw players off balance even as they underscore the discretionary – and thus enhanced – powers of the monarch.” Susan E. Waltz, “Interpreting Political Reform in Morocco,” in In the Shadow of the Sultan: Culture, Power, and Politics in Morocco, ed. Rahma Bourqia and Susan Gilson Miller (Cambridge, ma: Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1999), 291.

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system.”17 Abdallah Hammoudi argues these parallel networks weaken institutional structures, such as political parties and trade unions. In this postcolonial order a civilian network emerged, alongside the makhzen and the military network. The king acted in such a way as to maintain rivalry between the networks and to appear as both indispensable mediator and unique source of favors and prebends, which were bestowed as rewards for political service.18 In the formation of such networks, socio-economic and traditional categories such as rural, urban, orthodox ʿulama, Sufi groups, zawiya and brotherhoods, tariqas, caids, marabouts, chorfas, Arab and Berber linguistic groups, and other tribal networks play a very important role. In return for their allegiance, favoured groups were economically and politically empowered. First and foremost were two culturally and socially very different client groups: rural notables and military officers.19 The role of these groups is seen in how goods are distributed. Recovered colonial land was distributed to rural notables and officers, landownership freed from tax payments was later extended to those military members with investments in Western Sahara, and large state owned companies were run by favoured clients. The early period of public sector expansion offered many opportunities for royal gifts, and such gifts had the effect of depoliticising an active political opposition and replacing parties with networks and clans.20 Along with the bayʿa, the religious-traditional oath of allegiance, this served the purpose of disempowering the Nationalist movement (organised in the Istiqlal party and the National Union of Popular Forces, unfp). In fact, rural notables were regarded as the “security group” – i.e. the basis of the Moroccan monarchy’s political authority. As early as in the 1963 elections, and as late as in the foundation of the Party of Authenticity and Modernity (pam Party) in 2008 through the rural Rhamna district’s election of the King’s direct proxy, Fouad 17

Jean-Francois Clement quoted in Bahgat Korany, “Monarchical Islam with a Democratic Veneer: Morocco,” in Political Liberalisation and Democratisation in the Arab World. Comparative Experiences vol. 2, ed. Bahgat Korany, Rex Brynen and Paul Noble (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998), 172. 18 Abdallah Hammoudi, Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundation of Moroccan Authoritarianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 33. 19 Driss Ben Ali, “Changement de pacte social et Ccntinuité de l’ordre politique au Maroc,” in Changement politiques au Maghreb, ed. Michel Camau (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1991), 53. 20 Hammoudi, Master and Disciple, 33.

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Ali Ben Himma, has the proximity of rural interest groups to the government been a remarkable feature.21 Given the importance of such systems of patronage, and the relatively stable socio-economic and ideological consensus built up around the king, opposition politics and, more broadly, political citizenship has been a key field in which, compared to other Middle East countries limited political activism has been possible. Yet, the political field has had the characteristic of being “defused,” in that the central position of the King, as well as the distribution of economic resources, remained out of public debates. Ironically, the more politics was stable and consequently, “defused,”22 the more was it possible for the King to engage in sometimes meaningful reforms with regards to citizenship, thereby broadening the amount of permissible public debate.23 For example, the 1990s saw under Hassan ii a significant push towards the effective promotion of human rights and the release of hundreds of political prisoners, precisely because key political opponents, such as the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (usfp), stopped claiming electoral alternation of governments and democratic citizenship. Instead, they contended with King Hassan’s offer of alternance that was controlled by the King, which corresponded to little more than an institutionalised alternation of royal patronage systems. As a result, the so-called opposition to the King ceased its oppositional character and joined the royal system of patronage and participated in essentially technocratic governments.24

Citizenship and Patronage under Mohamed vi

When Mohamed vi succeeded his father Hassan ii in July 1999, he inherited Hassan ii’s master plan of 1998. Under that plan, alternance, the former opposition or Koutla (the two socialist parties usfp and Party of Progress and Socialism (pps), together with the nationalist-conservative Istiqlal Party) was 21 22

23 24

Rémy Levau: Le fellah marocain: Defenseur du trône (Paris: Presse de la Fondation Nationale de Science Politique, 1985). A term originally coined by Mohamed Tozy, “Représentation/intercession: Les enjeux de pouvoir dans les ‘champs politiques désamorcés’ au Maroc,” in Annuaire Afrique du Nord 28 (1989): 153–168. See also Abdesalam Maghraoui and G. Denoeux, “King Hassan’s Strategy of Political Dualism,” Middle East Policy 5 (1998): 104–127. See Maghraoui and Denoeux, “King Hassan’s Strategy.” See Abdesalam Maghraoui, “Depolitization in Morocco,” Journal of Democracy 13 (2002): 24–32.

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included in the system of patronage. The consensus that the country’s political leadership developed continued to include partial political participation of the elite in exchange for support to Mohamed vi leadership, thereby achieving an effective alliance through which the bourgeoisie’s and the monarch’s long-term survival vis-à-vis the increasingly popular Islamist parties would be guaranteed. It is against this background that Mohamed vi announced, at the beginning of his reign in November 1999, a “New Concept of Authority” which included civil, economic, and social components. This indicated the monarchy’s willingness to make further civil rights concessions. This promise of the New Concept of Authority partially materialised three years later when in 2002 the Islamic family code, Moudawana, was comprehensively reformed, giving women similar rights to men in the area of divorce and access to marriage. This inclusiveness with regards to women was further compounded in a new electoral code, in which women were initially granted 10 percent of reserved seats, consisting of 30 seats in addition to the 295 member lower house of the parliament. The number female representatives was increased to 60 members in the 2011 constitution. Such inclusion and expansion of citizenship continued to mark Mohamed vi rule over the first eight years. In 2007, the age limit of first time voters was reduced from 21 to 18 years, the Islamist Party of Justice and Development (pjd) was allowed to field candidates in all electoral districts – whereas before the Moroccan ministry of interior informally approved only a select number of Islamist candidates. The press, first and foremost the two weekly Francophone journals Le Journal Hebdomadaire, and TelQuel, as well as their Arabic counterparts Assahifa and Nichane¸ pushed into new journalistic fields and began to address questions of corruption and human rights abuses. In addition, they frequently ran independent and sometimes upsetting editorial opinions discussing sensitive topics, such as the Western Sahara issue, the army, and the monarch’s personal wealth. While the press has frequently been described as sensationalist, it is clear that increasing the scope of political citizenship and the increasing freedom of the journalistic market were signs of the monarch’s shifting alignment, as well as signs of the continued need for the King to share power with members of the former opposition.25 Yet, prior to the profound changes triggered by the Arab Spring in Tunisia, there have been three factors that reversed the power sharing formula and

25

Moshe Gershovich, “The ‘New Press’ and Free Speech under Mohamed vi,” in Contemporary Morocco: State, Politics, and Society under Mohamed vi, ed. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman and Daniel Zisenwine, (Abingdon, Routledge, 2012), 93–108.

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decreased the scope for electoral accountability and democratic citizenship. First, the electoral gains that the Islamist group Justice and Development Party (pjd) achieved rendered the alliance with the secular, pro-monarch, socialist “opposition” increasingly meaningless. Second, the King significantly reinforced his political authority throughout the 2000s, whilst the former opposition lost credibility, even rendering these parties a liability for the King. Third, his economic influence over the private sector through the royal-held Omnium Nord Africaine (ona), as well as monarchical control in para-state organisations such as the Hassan ii Fund, significantly strengthened economic patronage and rendered the state stronger. This can be contrasted with the end of the 1990s when, inter alia, Hassan ii gave in to demands by political parties due to intense economic difficulties and a vibrant private sector that was organised in the entrepreneur’s association cgem. Consequently, whilst the first phase of Mohamed vi rule (1999–2007) was marked by the increasing inclusion of long-term political opponents and civil society actors, such as Driss Benzekri, in a process of human rights reconciliation through the Justice and Reconciliation Commission (which culminated in the full participation of the pjd in the 2007 parliamentary election), the second period prior to the 2011 events (2007–11) were marked by an increasing exclusion. By forcing the closure of Le Journal Hebdomadaire in 2010 and by forcing leading journalists such as Aboubakr Jamai, Ali Amar, Ahmed Benchemsi into exile, by accusing them and their journals of royal defamation in Moroccan courts, the once vibrant press increasingly was stifled. Second, the private sector and with it the employer’s federation Confédération Générale des Entreprises du Maroc (cgem) became increasingly under direct royal control. Elections to the cgem’s presidency had become a competitive, para-political field in the 1990s, where opposition to the state’s economic policies and autocratic practices was most commonly expressed.26 The election of Moulay Hafid Elalamy in 2006 to the presidency of the cgem was a turning point in this respect. The former ceo of Compagnie Africaine d’Assurances (caa), which was owned by the royal holding ona, and a ­member of two royal associations, the Mohamed v Foundation for Solidarity presided over by Mohamed vi, and the Lalla Salma Foundation for the Fight Against Cancer, his presidency marked the beginning of royal hegemony over

26

See Maryam Catusse, L’Entrée en politique des entrepreneurs au Maroc (PhD diss., Université de Droit, d’Economie, et de Sciences d’Aix-Marseille, Institut d’Etudes Politiques d’Aix-en-Provence, 1999).

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the ­employer’s federation. Not surprisingly, in 2013 he also became the technocratic, i.e. non-partisan, Minister of Industry and Commerce. Third, the monarchy effectively penalised the usfp – a member of the 2002–2007 government coalition – and its more radical wing after calls for a constitutional reform were supported by politicians at the head of the usfp parliamentary group, Driss Lachguer. The electoral defeat of the usfp in 2007, whilst not directly engineered by the King, was nevertheless linked to the party’s marginalisation as a junior partner in the 2002–07 government (it was refused the premiership). Fourth, by side-lining established political parties, including the usfp, through the creation of a new royal party in 2008, the earlier mentioned pam, the monarchy was able to actively recruit aspiring, technocratic new-comers into a new system of patronage outside of both usfp and Istiqlal. All of this continued to be based on the monarchy’s rural power base, not just evidenced by Fouad El Himma’s running in a rural province of the Kingdom in 2007, but also by continuously gerrymandering the rural vote and loyal towns in constituencies with variable electors and members.27 As I argued elsewhere, the increasing royal domination of the political sphere since 2007 reflected the monarch’s increasing strength, as he remained the uncontested leader in juxtaposition to what is perceived as a corrupt electoral system.28 Established political parties were viewed as corrupt and endowed with little political trust as evidenced by public opinion surveys and exit polls. Such polls also indicate that the ineffective party system was contrasted with the King’s energetic projects, especially his land-mark National Initiative for Human Development. This was launched in 2005 and aimed to improve the standard of living among Morocco’s poorest population groups. Accompanied by a massive public relations campaign, the initiative saw the King inaugurating new projects around the country almost on a daily basis during much of 2005 and 2006. Riding a wave of popularity, he was proclaimed King of the Poor and in a (banned) 2007 survey of Moroccan political leaders published by the French newspaper Le Monde his approval rating was above 90 percent.29

27 28

29

James Sater, “Elections and Authoritarian Rule in Morocco,” Middle East Journal 63 (2009): 381–400. James Sater, “New Wine in Old Bottles: Political Parties under Mohamed vi,” in Contemporary Morocco: State, Politics, and Society under Mohamed vi, ed. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman and Daniel Zisenwine, (Abingdon, Routledge: 2012), 9–23. TelQuel, “Le peuple juge son roi,” cited in Le Monde, August 3, 2009.

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Rearranging Instrumental Patronage – The Case of Women The inclusion of women in networks of patronage is particularly revealing of what constitutes a Moroccan particularity – a liberalised civil society that coexists with very efficient systems of patronage. Upon his ascendance to the throne in July 1999, Mohamed vi made statements in favour of increasing women’s rights, in particular with regards to reforming the family code, moudawana. On August 20 he declared: How can we expect to achieve progress and prosperity when women, which constitute half of society, have their interests taken away (bafoué); when the rights with which our holy religion has endowed them, to make them equal to men, are being ignored? These are rights that correspond to their noble mission, rights that protect them against all injustice or violence of which they may fall victim. This [legal injustice] has happened even if they have achieved a level where they can successfully compete with men, in the sciences as well as in the workplace.30 This initiative to include women has not been without societal pressure. In fact, since the early 1990s, women’s groups have been increasingly vocal, seeking independence from political parties which had attempted to control their political activities. As early as 1997, women’s rights groups drafted an Action Plan for the Integration of Women in Development, an initiative of the World Bank in collaboration with the Moroccan government. It included the most important women’s rights demand: the reform of the Islamic-conservative moudawana. After it became public in 1999, a massive protest led by Islamists in summer 2000 led to its withdrawal, and a new committee drafted its replacement behind closed doors from November 2000 to 2003 without public participation. Crucially, after a series of terror acts by radical Islamists in Casablanca in May 2003, the reform of the Family Code was made public and was quickly passed in June 2003 much to the satisfaction of women’s rights activists for whom this signified an important political victory. At about the same time, women’s rights activists started to work together with members of political parties in order to introduce a female quota for the upcoming 2002 parliamentary election. Such a direct change in the political landscape fell on the monarch’s very receptive ears, as he was seeking to introduce the above mentioned New Concept of Authority through which he

30

Cited in James Sater, “Changing Politics from Below? Women Parliamentarians in Morocco,” Democratization 14 (August 2007): 729.

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could re-arrange political alliances to his own need and vision. Changes to the composition of Morocco’s powerless parliament could increase both domestic and international support for Morocco’s monarchy.31 Yet, it is also important to remember that throughout the 1990s, Hassan ii’s formula of alternance from above, i.e. alternance decreed by the monarch and intrinsically linked to royal patronage, stood in tension with a rival conception of alternance by the ballot, i.e. as an outcome of free and fair election and the exercise of democratic citizenship. Consequently, increasing the number of women in parliament and government could, together with changes to the Family Code, visibly strengthened the modernist branch of the kingdom’s legitimacy and support network, and included newcomers into the political system. Partially due to such political considerations, the brief campaign organised by the Network of Women in Political Parties during the spring 2002 electoral reform was quite successful. In the midst of the first electoral reform after Mohamed vi’s accession to the throne, women called for a 30 per cent quota, as according to the activists, a real impact only becomes noticeable at this level. As existing male members of parliament would not have agreed to a quota that may have come at the expense of their own seats, the quota that was introduced extended the number of deputies to thirty women, not 30 per cent, from 295 to 325 members, and delegated to an independent national list in which women would compete against each other using a proportional system of representation called the National List. Interestingly, the fact that women were selected onto this national list was the result of a simple oral promise by party leaders, what Moroccans quite ironically called a “gentlemen’s agreement.” The official explanation for this was that a law that would institute a real quota would violate the principle of gender equality and non-discrimination as enshrined in article 8 of the 1996 constitution.32 This relegation also meant that women were under intense pressure as other politically under-represented groups, such as younger generations, scientists, or linguistic minorities, could also be included in this quota/reserved list. What can be considered a major political victory for women that has had its origin outside of established political party networks, however, quickly entered the realm of established patronage systems inside political parties. This is because selection onto the national list, whilst not just being a result of a

31

32

Guillain Deneoux and Laurent Desfosses, “Rethinking the Moroccan Parliament: The Kingdom’s Legislative Development Initiative,” The Journal of North African Studies 12 (2007): 79–108. Constitution of Morocco, Kingdom of Morocco, 1996.

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“gentlemen’s agreement,” also increased the dependency of women on party leaderships. Ironically, whilst locally women faced difficulties due to informal, deep patronage and voter’s general disbelief in women as effective leaders in a male-dominated political world, nationally women entered the realm of political networks that increased their dependency on instrumental patronage.

Complexity of Deep Patronage among Female MPs

Whilst patronage is difficult to detect among a body of politicians, some cues can be taken from socio-economic data as well as from information about recruitment practices and political socialisation. A survey that this author conducted among the first cohort of women parliamentarians in 2007 indicates a very high degree of educational achievements, with about 50 percent holding doctoral degrees from various national and international universities. Whilst family support may be indicative of these women’s middle class background, a reported annual household income superior to usd 48,000 of about 50 percent of these women MPs in fact indicates not just middle class background, but membership in Morocco’s political elite. After all, in the mid-2000s Morocco’s gnp per capita was approximately usd 1,200. In addition, the periods of political socialisation and apprenticeship in political parties can be considered quite extensive: almost two-thirds of the 2002–2007 women elected in parliament had been active in party politics for over 20 years, and only one-third entered politics after 1980. Such political socialisation and apprenticeship extend to non-party activities: activities in women’s rights associations are very common and about two-thirds report to hold presidencies of various local women’s rights associations. Through such networks, political patronage obtained through membership in political parties and, since 2002, in parliament, can effectively be extended to civil society organisations. Asked about the role that politics plays in their families, nearly all women surveyed considered political activism a family tradition. Most often, either father or husband has been active in politics, illustrating the strong family ties that underlie many political parties.33 Such family ties may not in and of themselves count as patronage, yet the effects are quite strong on political party activism. In contrast to many other

33

James Sater, “Changing Politics”; James Sater, “Reserve Seats, Patriarchy and Patronage in Morocco,” in The Impact of Gender Quotas, ed. J. Piscopo, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 72–87.

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countries in which women, once they entered the parliament, start to establish networks of female MPs based on practical and strategic gender interests,34 similar attempts sponsored by the us National Democratic Institute (ndi) have proven ineffective, in spite of the lack of ideological differences between the political parties – except for the Islamist pjd party. However, the lack of ideological orientation may also mean that political activities are more quickly absorbed by political patronage, such as recruiting individuals as candidates to both local lists and women’s reserved list. In both cases, approval is necessary from an internal “candidate commission” that is often handpicked by party bosses. As a consequence, there have been quite a number of women parliamentarians who were relatives of party bosses to the extent that female MPs have begun to describe such candidates as “parachuted” onto party lists, as they have suddenly appeared out of nowhere onto the top tiers of women’s lists. Outside of the national list at the local, multimember constituency level, the patronage of the party nomination is in principle only effective for relatively new and “fresh” candidates. Locally powerful women may switch party allegiances if the political party refuses to nominate her over a (male) candidate. However, to the author’s knowledge, this has only happened once in 2002 in the case of Fatna El Khiel. Yet, even this locally powerful woman entered the 2011 parliament in the more “orderly” way, i.e. on the national list to which she was (s)elected. The dependency on party leadership, and thereby patronage networks, can be further detected by comparing the list of women MPs elected in 2002, 2007, and 2011. Of the 35 members that were elected in 2002, only about 50 percent (18 out of 35) made it into the 2007–2012 parliament. A closer look at the numbers reveals that in two parliamentary parties, the Istiqlal and the Popular Movement, all female 2002–2007 parliamentarians were “re-elected.” In contrast, not one single female parliamentarian of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces was “re-elected” to the 2007–2012 parliament. Officially, the reason was that the party tried to be more “democratic” by “choosing” different women at the heads of the lists – away from women such as Fatima Belmoudden, Fettoum Koudama, or Rachida Benmessaoud, towards Salwa Karkri Belakziz, Aïcha Lekhmass, and Latifa Jbabdi.35 Implicitly, it appears that with a new head 34

Najma Chowdhury, et al., “Redefining Politics: Patterns of Womens’ Political Engagement from a Global Perspective,” in Women and Politics Worldwide, ed. Nelson, Barbara and Najma Chowdhury (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), 18. 35 Mohamed Boudarham, “La liste nationale: La discrimination positive divise les femmes,” Aujourd’hui Le Maroc, June 22, 2007, accessed at http://www.agadirnet.com/ news-actualites/details_listes-nationales-la-discrimination-positive-divise-les-femmes _3862.html.

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of the party, Mohamed El Yazghi in 2002–2007, the party leadership activates different patronage networks from those that prevailed under the preceding head of the party, Abderrahman Youssoufi. Simlarly, with the leadership change from Mohamed El Yazghi to Driss Lachguer after 2007, Latifa Jbabdi, as well as Aicha Lekhmass no longer figured on the head of the lists in 2011, and gave way to other women. Quite ironically, whilst Jbabdi was elected locally, Driss Lachguer replaced her himself in the traditional pro-usfp constituency of Rabat in the 2011 election. On the other hand, it may not be a coincidence that in 2007, both the Istiqlal and the Popular Movement reappointed all their women MPs to the national list. After all, they did not experience a leadership change between 2002 and 2007. Yet, after the controversial appointment of the Istiqlali Abbas El Fassi to head the government in 2007, and his loss of the office of secretary-general of the Istiqlal party (and failed attempts to include another member of the El Fassi clan, Abdelwahed El Fassi, in the party leadership), only one out of the previous seven female members continued in the 2011–15 legislature. Hence again, the change in leadership brought with it a different network of alliances into elected office.36 This illustrates the particularities of Morocco’s political party system in which party membership interlinks with tribal, kinship, ethnic and regional loyalties. Even if women present themselves not on the national list where direct patronage seems more important, but at the constituency level where local support is more crucial (and chances of winning in a male dominated society), the process of nominating local candidates also remains monopolised by the party leadership. In 2007, the Socialist usfp only presented three female candidates at the top of their local lists for Morocco’s 92 constituencies.37 Overall, the number of women that were listed as candidates in the election to the lower house only marginally increased from 266 to 269, out of a total candidate pool that increased from 5865 to 6691.38 Thus, the actual percentage of women listed by political parties as candidates dropped from 4.5 percent to 4 percent, during a period when major reforms increased women’s rights quite 36 37 38

Lists of MPs elected to Morocco’s parliament have been obtained from www.maroc.ma. Accessed 22 February 2015. Boudarham, “La Liste Nationale.” Boutheina Griba, “Renforcement du leadership féminine et de la participation des femmes à la vie politique et au processus de prise des décisions en Algérie, au Maroc et en Tunisie” (Tunis and Santo Domingo, un-instraw and Centre de la Femme Arabe pour la Formation et la Recherche, cawtar, 2009). http://www.womenpoliticalparticipation. org/upload/publication/publication1.pdf (accessed September 2, 2009), 56.

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substantially. Not surprisingly, just one usfp woman was elected on the local list, while the number of locally, directly elected women dropped from five to four, before increasing to eight (out of a total of 295) in 2011. All the above took place in a national context in which an informal quota also includes government appointees who are, however, directly selected by the monarch and his advisors. Here, the lack of autonomous constituencies is an important feature of appointees and increased the level of patronage. In the aftermath of the 2007 election, five out of twenty-two full ministries were headed by women, partially reflecting the nationalist-leftist coalition government with a larger number of second-tier politicians: energy, health, sport, culture, and social development. In 2011, this number was reduced to two out of twenty-four. It appears that with the pjd (Islamist) dominated government, the competition among its more secular coalition partners for a reduced number of ministerial positions increased and therefore pushed women candidates out, leaving the lesser visible ministries, those for craftsmanship affairs and women’s affairs, to the two female ministers.

Instrumental Patronage, Civil Society and the Authenticity and Modernity Party

While women’s involvement in politics have become an issue of deep patronage throughout political parties and the monarch, a more formal source of patronage has been the creation of the Authenticity and Modernity Party (pam) in 2008. Arguably, a process of monarchical patronage has thereby immunised Morocco from any serious repercussions of the Arab spring, as a large number of civil society actors have become quasi- members of the political system. The process of its creation, from a broad-based political alliance named Movement of All Democrats (mtd) headed by the closest friend of the King, Fouad Ali El Himma, was preceded by important mutations in the composition of Morocco’s political elite of which the reforms of women’s representation and legal rights were an important aspect. More important, perhaps, was the treatment of Morocco’s past, with its severe human rights abuses, and the attempt by the monarch to distinguish his rule from that of his father, Hassan ii. To this end, a large number of civil society groups were invited to participate in new organisations, such as the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (ier), and to work on a large number of reports and public hearings of those who had suffered from past abuses, stipulated compensations for victims and included particular compensations for female victims, as well as issued recommendations for legal reforms including increased accountability and important constitutional

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changes and a clear separation of governmental powers.39 To allow such projects meant that the first eight years of Mohamed vi’s rule became defined by his reformist spirit, of which Fouad El Himma was one of the prime architects. In addition to human rights oriented patronage, economic patronage reinforced the central position of the monarchical system in two other ways: First, the King successfully co-opted the human development theme by launching in 2005 the above mentioned National Initiative for Human Development (indh). Second, privatisation campaigns reinforced the strength of the King’s private sector equity holdings, and made preferential business partnerships dependent on political support. In fact, the period of economic privatisation also had the effect of strengthening parallel state institutions, such as Mohamed v Foundation for Solidarity and the Hassan ii Fund. These were financed through the revenues that were generated by the privatisation campaigns, staffed by loyal kingsmen and – women, made them, not the partisan ministries of economy or development, the primary institutions responsible for the implementation of the indh. In private business the King’s pivotal position was reinforced through his private ownership of large supermarket chains (Marjane, Acima), banks (Attarijawafa) vegetable oil producers (Lesieurs), and dairy products (Centrale Laitière). As in many other Middle East countries, royal economic patronage over the middle class has also been strengthened through control over private sector associations, such as the aforementioned Employers’ Federation. Culturally, the Fondation Omnium Nord Africaine sponsored, amongst other events, the Villa Des Arts in Rabat, through which new artists and important event organisers obtain access to royal patronage. Musical events were organised in Fes (Sacred Music Festival) and Essaouira (Gnaoua and World Music) by locally powerful organisations (Essaouira Mogador Association) and founded by one of the most senior advisors to the King, André Azoulay, which contributed to absorption of cultural activities and welfare into royal circles. However, with the electoral victories of the Islamist pjd party, all these activities seem to be aimed at taming a secular and elitist social strata that is, in fact, little in need of taming. The 2003 suicide bombings in Casablanca which targeted a luxury hotel, a Spanish cultural centre, as well as a Jewish institution, bear testimony to the difficulty of using systems of patronage to reach broad strata of the population.

39

Human Rights Watch, “La Commission Marocaine de Vérité: Le devoir de mémoire honoré a une époque incertaine,” 17 (2005), 11, accessed at http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/ files/reports/morocco1105frwcover.pdf.

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This is partially because such systems rely as much on inclusion of select groups as on the exclusion of everybody else. This was recognised by King Mohamed vi, when he attempted to contain public criticism of systems of patronage, frequently expressed in domestic newspapers. In his words: You will always find me … determined to thwart every discourse that aims at casting doubt on the importance of holding elections and on the utility itself of political parties. I will foil all those trendy practices that aim at posing a threat to their credibility… [I have] the duty to outlaw faulty, nihilist, and deceptive conceptions, which attack the respect owed to the democratic verdict of the ballot boxes.40 In addition to such undisguised threats, existing patronage systems in political parties as illustrated above in the case of women, made it very difficult for newcomers to obtain access to the political system, and in spite of frequent calls for more openness, most parties have refrained from changing much of their leadership-centred organisational structures. This has made the Islamist pjd the only newcomer attractive among voters since the 1997 election when it was first authorised to participate, as witnessed by its steadily increased parliamentary representation from 9 seats out of 295 to 107 out of 395 in 2011. Whilst in many ways, the authorisation of the pjd was meant to reinforce moderate Islamists and to integrate disaffected fractions of the population, the continued popularity of rival Islamist groups that appear to pose a threat to the monarchical stability, such as the Al Adl Wal Ihssane, illustrates the limits of this strategy. Taken together with continuously decreasing voter turnout during parliamentary elections, plummeting to 37 percent in 2007, the foundation of the Authenticity and Modernity Party (pam) appeared as a necessary new strategy. After all, parties themselves appeared unable or unwilling to reform themselves. As this appeared to have led to political disillusionment among disaffected youth, the monarch used royal patronage in order to address and, invariably, contain the popularity of Islamist groups – both moderate and at the fringe. While the popularity of the moderate Islamist groups, pjd, was hardly contained as evidenced by a remarkable increase of pjd parliamentarians from 46 to 107 members in the 2011–2016 parliament, an important side-effect of the pam’s creation was the containment of the Arab spring, or rather the Moroccan movement it inspired, the February 20 Movement. This is because pam managed to represent a movement of “gradual politicization of civil society 40

King Mohamed vi, July 30, 2007, www.maroc.ma, accessed February 10, 2015.

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and entrepreneurs”41 as witnessed by the incorporation in its leadership of key members of Morocco’s leftist human rights organisations (such as Salah El Ouadi, Khadija Rouissi) and entrepreneurs who have sought, since the 1990s, a role in politics (Ali Belhaj, Abderrahim Lahjouji). An important precursors of pam was Daba 2007, a large scale public relations campaign that attempted to rally more popular support for electoral politics and, in particular, attempted to mobilise youth to join the elections as voters and candidates. As with pam in 2009–10, Daba 2007 organised public meetings and debates about people’s concern, all under slogans such as “the politics of proximity” and “the moralisation of public life” that appear close to civil society activists’ concerns. As to pam and the Movement of All Democrats, the public meetings it organised within this spirit of “the politics of proximity” appeared quite successful if judged by the exceptional turnout it achieved.42 Given the prestige of its leader, Fouad El Himma, the very selective, high profile individuals who were invited to join, and the media coverage it thereby attained, this may have hardly been surprising. Yet, the effect was such that when the to date only real pro-democracy movement appeared on Morocco’s political centre-stage from February to April 2011, Morocco’s middle class and opinion makers, with their resources at universities, civil society, media, and the private sector, have already been absorbed into networks of patronage. This meant that the mass movement lacked leadership from well-known activists, and in turn allowed co-opted civil society actors to be involved in yet another of the King’s projects to create a democratic façade of participation and integration in a new constitutional project that, as with the Movement of All Democrats and Daba 2007 before, was clouded in democratic rhetoric with little democratic content.

Patronage, the February 20 Movement, and the Arab Spring

There have been multiple patronage systems and alliances that developed throughout the 2000s, and political changes reinforced patronage at the expense of democratic citizenship. The unprecedented challenges to the regime in the early months of 2011 brought to the surface the exclusionary aspects of such patronage systems. As a very interesting ethnographic account of the events in Tangier illustrates, the ousting of President Ben Ali was almost immediately followed by anti-globalisation protests by youth, lamenting 41 42

Ferdinand Eibl, “The Party of Authenticity and Modernity (pam): Trajectory of a Political Deus Ex Machine,” The Journal of North African Studies 17 (2012) 1: 52. Eibl, “The Party of Authenticity,” 48–49.

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corruption, nepotism, lack of justice and, above all, the unfair distribution of wealth, all of which Moroccans call hogra.43 While attacks on the movement that called for a nation-wide protests on February 20 were frequent, violent and defamatory, the movement was joined by the Islamist group Al Adl Wal Ihssane, unemployed graduates, as well as labour unions that used the protests as an opportunity to increase their pressure on the regime to obtain financial advantages for their members – particularly a raise to the country’s minimum wage. What all these groups have in common is their marginalised position at the fringe of Morocco’s patronage system, receiving little if any political or material benefits that the monarchy had bestowed upon others. Partially as a consequence of Morocco’s economic liberalisation efforts, partially as a consequence of seeking a regime-private sector partnership, trade unions have lost not just members but also political significance, atomised and placed at the margins of Morocco’s clientelist party system. Yet, while they have lost significance due to size, internal disputes, and political rifts, they have been involved in sometimes violent labour unrest in the years preceding the Arab Spring, rallying non-members – slum dwellers, uprooted migrants, informally employed members of the Lumpenproletariat to their cause.44 While the demands for constitutional change have been analysed elsewhere, it is important to point out that these protests almost never mentioned the personality of the King, nor the monarchical system, in their demands, limiting their demands to specific changes to constitutional articles (such as Article 19 which makes the King a supreme political figure). In fact, when calls for an end to the makhzen or the hogra are voiced and individual personalities mentioned, protesters addressed the circle of patronage surrounding the Monarchy, such as Mounir Majidi (director of King Mohamed’s private wealth holdings) and Fouad El Himma (the King’s political right hand and founder of the pam party discussed above), rather than the King himself. In contrast to these marginalised sectors of Morocco’s politicised society, the official political scene supported the King’s efforts of controlling the content and scope of reforms. The King’s speeches were well received by all political parties and became reference points for political discussions, particularly the speech of March 9, 2011, which announced the creation of the Consultative Commission for the Constitutional Revision. Those speeches were lauded with 43 44

Abdelmajid Hannoum, “Tangier in the Time of Arab Revolutions: An Ethnopolitical Diary,” The Journal of North African Studies 18 (2013) 2: 272–290. Matt Buehler, “Labour Demands, Regime Concessions: Moroccan Unions and the Arab Uprising,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42 (2015): 88–103. doi:10.1080/13530194 .2015.973189. 3–4.

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superlatives; critical discussions of those speeches remained outlawed under the constitution. Under the leadership of the well-respected jurist Abdelatif Menouni, the Consultative Commission consulted with a wide range of actors from civil society, political parties, business associations, and labour unions. Menouni presented ideas thereby obtained to the King’s advisor, Mohamed Moattasim, who in the end became the final architect of the new constitution which was drafted under the auspices of the King without any public contribution or debate. Even though the process was highly undemocratic, lacked transparency, and was considered little more than an exercise in political public relations, the number of participants in the process illustrates the relevance of extended patronage systems, extending even to the important Sufi brotherhoods, the zaouia, such as that of Boutchichia that called upon its members to vote in favour of the new constitution two weeks after it was presented to the public in June 2011.45 Interestingly, Menouni even tried to include members of the February 20 Movement in his consultations, extending the potential for patronage across new political actors of society. The members of the February 20 Movement refused, considering the undemocratic process detrimental to its own aims, whilst its decentralised leadership (or absence thereof) may have made it difficult to engage in any meaningful discussions and obtain access to patronage. When the constitutional draft was put to a referendum on July 1, 2011, the number of publicly dissenting voices outside of the February 20 Movement was close to zero. From political parties to labour unions and business associations – labour unions have traded in their support for minimum wage raises – a Yes vote was the order of the day. Imams in state run mosques were instructed to preach in favour of the project. Such support resulted in an approval rate of 98.94% and a voter turnout of 72.56%. Given the context of Hosni Mubarak’s, Muammar Gadhafi’s, and Zine Eddine Ben Ali’s removal from office, the vote was understood as a vote in favour of the monarch and against his removal. Conclusion From the above it appears that the monarchy is not simply well entrenched ideologically and religiously to fend off demands for democratic citizenship, even if its popularity remains high and the religious legitimacy of the King as amir al-muʾminin is almost uncontested. Beyond deep patronage, the role of the shifting system of instrumental patronage has become crucial: since 45

Maghraoui, “Constitutional Reform,” 693–694.

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the late 1990s, the inclusion in patronage of political parties, women MPs, human rights organisations, as well as moderate Islamists, guaranteed that in the public contest between royalists and opponents, the image of the King as a democrat and reformer was upheld by a large number of politically significant actors. This provided the regime with enough leverage and strength to engage in the rhetoric of reform rather than feel challenged by it, and promulgate a new constitution. Whilst Morocco’s new constitution does not provide effective checks on monarchical power, the reform process also avoided the unconstraint use of brutal force against protesters, thereby limiting the number of casualties among protesters in comparison to its North African neighbours. This analysis of patronage networks therefore illustrates some important points about liberalised autocracies and democratic citizenship with regards to the Arab Spring and the February 20 Movement. In the historically unique contestation of autocratic rule in Morocco and the concomitant public expression of democratic citizenship, instrumental patronage has been fundamental in countering the threat of mass mobilisation. What distinguishes Morocco from some of its neighbours may be the organisational and institutional character of instrumental patronage that has founded structures in political parties, women’s right movements, economic networks, as well as in the country’s religious-tribal organisations. As this analysis attempted to highlight, these structures have been built and have been reproduced over the past 15 years, with important shifts occurring that indicate how demands that occurred from members of civil society were able to gain access to patronage networks and initiate many of the visible and liberal political changes typical of liberalised autocracies. Bibliography Anderson, Lisa. “Dynasts and Nationalists: Why Monarchies Survive.” In Middle East Monarchie: The Challenge of Modernity, edited by Joseph Kostinger, 53–70. Boulder, Co. Lynne Rienner, 2000. Ben Ali, Driss. “Changement de pacte social et continuité de l’ordre politique au Maroc.” In Changement politiques au Maghreb, edited by Michel Camau, 51–72. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1991. Benchemsi, Ahmed. “Morocco: Outfoxing the Opposition.” Journal of Democracy 23 (2012): 57–69. Benchemsi, Ahmed. “Don’t be Fooled by Appearances, Liberal Values are Spreading in the Arab World.” The Middle East Institute, December 9, 2014. Accessed at http://www.mei.edu/conent/article/don%E2%80%99t-be-fooled-appearances -liberal-values-are-spreading-arab-world.

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Boudarham, Mohamed. “La liste nationale: La discrimination positive divise les femmes.” Aujourd’hui Le Maroc, June 22, 2007. Accessed at http://www.agadirnet .com/news-actualites/details_listes-nationales-la-discrimination-positive-divise -les-femmes_3862.html. Bourqia, Rahma and Susan Gilson Miller (eds). In the Shadow of the Sultan: Culture, Power, and Politics in Morocco. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1999. Brumberg, Daniel. “Democratization in the Arab World: The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy.” Journal of Democracy 13 (2002): 56–68. Buehler, Matt. “Labour Demands, Regime Concessions: Moroccan Unions and the Arab Uprising.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42 (2014): 88–103. DOI:10.1 080/13530194.2015.973189. Catusse, Maryam. L’Entrée en politique des entrepreneurs au Maroc. PhD diss., Université de Droit, d’Economie, et de Sciences d’Aix-Marseille, Institut d’Etudes Politiques d’Aix-en-Provence, 1999. Deneoux, Guillain and Laurent Desfosses. “Rethinking the Moroccan Parliament: The Kingdom’s Legislative Development Initiative.” The Journal of North African Studies 12 (2007): 79–108. Eibl, Ferdinand. “The Party of Authenticity and Modernity (PAM): Trajectory of a Political Deus Ex Machine.” The Journal of North African Studies 17 (2012): 45–66. Gershovich, Moshe. “The ‘New Press’ and Free Speech under Mohamed VI.” In Contemporary Morocco: State, Politics, and Society under Mohamed VI, edited by Bruce Maddy-Weitzman and Daniel Zisenwine, 93–108. Abingdon, Routledge, 2012. Griba, Boutheina. “Renforcement du leadership feminine et de la participation des femmes à la vie politique et au processus de prise des décisions en Algérie, au Maroc et en Tunisie.” Tunis and Santo Domingo, UN-INSTRAW and Centre de la Femme Arabe pour la Formation et la Recherche. CAWTAR, 2009. Accessed September 2, 2009. http://www.womenpoliticalparticipation.org/upload/publication/ publication1.pdf. Hammoudi, Abdallah. Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundation of Moroccan Authoritarianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Hannoum, Abdelmajid. “Tangier in the Time of Arab Revolutions: An Ethnopolitical Diary.” The Journal of North African Studies 18 (2013): 272–290. Hoffmann, Anja and Christoph König. “Scratching the Democratic Façade: Framing Strategies of the 20 February Movement.” Mediterranean Politics 18 (2013): 1–22. Human Rights Watch, “La Commission Marocaine de Vérité: Le devoir de mémoire honoré a une époque incertaine,” 17 (2005): 11. Accessed at http://www.hrw.org/ sites/default/files/reports/morocco1105frwcover.pdf. Joffe, George. “The Arab Spring in North Africa: Origins and Prospects.” The Journal of North African Studies 16 (2011): 507–532.

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Korany, Bahgat. “Monarchical Islam with a Democratic Veneer: Morocco.” In Political Liberalisation and Democratisation in the Arab World. Comparative Experiences, vol. 2, edited by Bahgat Korany, Rex Brynen, and Paul Noble, 157–184. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998. Leca, Jean. “Réformes institutionnelles et légitimation du pouvoir au Maghreb.” In Développements politiques au Maghreb: Aménagements institutionnels et processus électoraux, edited by Jean Leca, 3–12. Paris: CNRS, 1979. Leca, Jean and Yves Schemeil. “Clientélisme et patrimonialisme dans le Monde Arabe.” International Political Science Review 4 (1983): 455–495. Levau, Rémy. Le fellah marocain: Défenseur du trône. Paris: Presse de la Fondation Nationale de Science Politique, 1985. Maghraoui, Abdesalam. “Depolitization in Morocco.” Journal of Democracy 13 (2002): 24–32. Maghraoui, Driss. “Constitutional Reform in Morocco: Between Consensus and Subaltern Politics.” The Journal of North African Politics 16 (2011): 679–699. Maghraoui, Abdesalam, and G. Denoeux. “King Hassan’s Strategy of Political Dualism.” Middle East Policy 5 (1998): 104–127. Najma Chowdhury et al. “Redefining Politics: Patterns of Womens’ Political Engagement from a Global Perspective.” In Women and Politics Worldwide, edited by ­Nelson, Barbara and Najma Chowdhury, 3–24. New Haven and London: Yale ­University Press, 1994. Sater, James. “Changing Politics from Below? Women Parliamentarians in Morocco.” Democratization 14 (2007): 723–742. Sater, James. “Elections and Authoritarian Rule in Morocco.” Middle East Journal 63 (2009): 381–400. Sater, James. “New Wine in Old Bottles: Political Parties under Mohamed VI.” In Contemporary Morocco: State, Politics, and Society under Mohamed VI, edited by Bruce Maddy-Weitzman and Daniel Zisenwine, 9–23. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012a. Sater, James. “Reserve Seats, Patriarchy and Patronage in Morocco.” In The Impact of Gender Quotas, edited by J. Piscopo, 72–87. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012b. Sharabi, Hisham. Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society. Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1992. TelQuel. “Le peuple juge son roi.” Le Monde, August 3, 2009. Tozy, Mohamed. “Représentation/intercession: Les enjeux de pouvoir dans les ‘champs politiques désamorcés’ au Maroc.” Annuaire Afrique du Nord 28 (1989): 153–168. Waltz, Susan E. “Interpreting Political Reform in Morocco.” In In the Shadow of the Sultan: Culture, Power, and Politics in Morocco, edited by Rahma Bourqia and Susan Gilson Miller, 282–305. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1999.

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Waterbury, John. The Commander of the Faithful: The Moroccan Political Elite: A Study of Segmented Politics London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970. Zartman, William I. Morocco: Problems of New Power. New York: Oceana, 1971. Zartman, William I. (ed.). Political Elites in Arab North Africa. London: Longman, 1982. Zartman, William I. (ed.). The Political Economy of Morocco, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1987.

chapter 6

Like but not Same as… : Arab Citizenship and the Jordanian Experience Morten Valbjørn The unexpected Arab Uprisings of 2011 have caused scholars of Arab politics to reflect on whether they need to fundamentally rethink how the Arab world is studied.1 New approaches and issues have been presented, classic themes in the study of (Arab) politics have reappeared, and existing theories rediscovered and in some cases revised. Citizenship theory is one example of the latter; it was originally introduced in a study of Arab politics by Butenschøn et al. more than a decade ago,2 and has recently been reintroduced as part of this post-2011 self-reflection. Meijer, for instance, argues that citizenship rights, conceptualised as the organising principle of state-society relations in modern states, are the main issue in the Middle East and the key to understanding the Arab Uprisings.3 In line with this renewed interest in citizenship theory, this chapter conducts a case study of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, perceived through the prism of citizenship. Instead of narrowly focusing on what a citizenship lens can specifically say about the Jordanian role in the Arab Uprisings, the chapter adopts a wider perspective. It examines broader, long-term political trends in Jordan and links these to the more general theoretical debate about whether

1 Morten Valbjørn, “Reflections on Self-Reflections – on Framing the Analytical Implications of the Arab Uprisings for the Study of Arab Politics,” Democratization 22 (2015): 218–238; pomeps, “Reflections on the Arab Uprisings,” in pomeps Studies (2014); F. Gregory Gause, “The Middle East Academic Community and the ‘Winter of Arab Discontent’,” in Seismic Shift – Understanding Change in the Middle East, ed. Ellen Laipson (Washington d.c.: The Henry L. Stimson Center, 2011), 11–27. 2 Nils A. Butenschøn, Uri Davis, and Manuel Hassassian, Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000). 3 Roel Meijer, “The Struggle for Citizenship: The Key to Understanding the Arab Uprisings,” in noref Report (2014). Roel Meijer, “Political Citizenship and Social Movements in the Arab World,” in Handbook of Political Citizenship and Social Movements, ed. Hein Anton van der Heijden (Edward Elgar Publisher, 2014), 628–660.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_008

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and how citizenship theory, as originally developed in and applied to Europe and the United States, is also useful in the study of Arab politics. More specifically, the chapter engages with Meijer’s point about how the use of general concepts and analytical distinctions from the European debate must be combined with a stronger attention to how the Middle East has its own particular history of citizenship and to Butenschøn’s call for a “back-to-basics” approach when applying citizenship theory to the Middle East. The first of the three major sections of this chapter briefly introduces to the broader discussion about the promises and pitfalls in viewing the Middle East through the lens of citizenship and why it might be necessary to modify citizenship theory when using this approach in a Middle Eastern context. Insights from this more general discussion are then used in the following sections, where the political developments in Jordan are examined through the lens of a modified citizenship theory. The second section compares the Jordanian trajectory of citizenship with Meijer’s overall narrative about the particular history of citizenship in the Middle East. While this mainly draws on experiences from the Arab republics, it appears that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has followed a pattern – in particular when it comes to the content of citizenship rights (the rights citizens have or claim) – that is similar to, though not exactly the same as, its republican counterparts. Despite these similarities, it is still possible to identify more distinct features in the Jordanian trajectory of citizenship, as will become clear in the third section. Inspired by Butenschøn’s “back-to-basics,” it returns to the fundamental questions surrounding who “the people” are, how political communities are constituted, and how to draw a distinction between “us” and “them.” It appears that this lens is a useful tool with which to grasp the prolonged, highly contested, and still ongoing debate about “where is Jordan,” “what is Jordan,” and “who is a Jordanian,” as well as to understand how these issues have influenced not only the content but, even more so, the depth and extent of citizenship in Jordan, and have given rise to quite different strategies for how the Hashemite regime has related to fragmented identities and group conflicts.

Towards a “Modified” Citizenship Theory on the Middle East

A prominent theme in the self-reflective debate on the study of Arab politics following the Arab Uprisings is the need for approaches that acknowledge the importance of the societal level in addition to the state level, ones that are able to move beyond the “democratisation and authoritarianism paradogma” that has been so prevalent in Middle East scholarship over the last two decades

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and towards a broader conceptualisation of political change, and ones which offer an alternative to both culture-blinded exceptionalism and culture-blind universalism.4 As already alluded to, citizenship theory has been presented as a promising place to look for a tool-kit with these qualities. Compared to various other dominant orientations in the past decades’ academic debate on the Middle East, citizenship theory has, following Meijer, a range of advantages in terms of tracing long-term political trends in Middle Eastern history and examining the causes and consequences of the Arab Uprisings.5 However, Meijer and Butenschøn both recognise that in order to fulfil these potentials it is necessary to modify or clarify the original citizenship theory in some regards. Citizenship theory takes as its point of departure the conceptualisation of citizenship as the “organising principle of state-society relations in modern states.”6 Citizenship is seen as a contractual relationship between the state and its inhabitants that regulates the legal status of the individual and defines the rules for participation in political institutions and access to public resources. However, Butenschøn points out that the phenomenon of citizenship does not in itself “presuppose equality, democracy or a vibrant society of citizens (civil society).”7 Rather, the content, extent, and depth of citizenship rights should be regarded as specific outcomes of different citizen-state relations.8 The “politics of citizenship” thus constitutes a lens through which we can “‘unveil’ important aspects of the architecture of power-relations between rulers and ruled, and to analyse the logic of these relations,”9 or, in other words, an “analytical gateway to insights into the dynamics of regime formation in a given country and its ‘raison d’état’, its state idea.”10 Much like Halliday’s notion of combining analytical universalism with historical particularism,11 citizenship theory is regarded as universal as far as its theoretical assumptions go but specific in its empirical focus (that is, the precise nature of the contractual relationship between ruler and ruled). Thus, 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11

For an overview of this debate, see Valbjørn, “Reflections on Self-Reflections.” Meijer, “Political Citizenship,” 630–631. Nils A. Butenschøn, “State, Power and Citizenship in the Middle East – a Theoretical Introduction,” in Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications, ed. Nils A. Butenschøn et al. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 8. Butenschøn, “State, Power and Citizenship,” 11. Meijer, “The Struggle for Citizenship,” 1. Butenschøn, “State, Power and Citizenship,” 5. Ibid., 6. Fred Halliday, Islam & the Myth of Confrontation – Religion and Politics in the Middle East (London: i.b. Tauris, 1995), 15.

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­citizenship in one country is considered comparable with but empirically different from citizenship in another country, and in the Middle East and anywhere else it therefore constitutes a prism through which we can address the political.12 Butenschøn argues that while some of the paradoxes and dilemmas related to the established order of Arab states might be unique as far as their historical and cultural references are concerned, they are not necessarily unique as challenges in the processes of creating political authority and of state-building.13 This analytical universalism is reflected in the way Butenschøn and Meijer draw on the mainly European/American theoretical debate on citizenship in their study of the Middle East, including Marshall’s14 classic distinction between civil, political, and social citizenship. Similarly, they employ the analytical division between extent (who belongs to the body politic), content (the rights citizens have or claim), and depth of citizenship (what contribution a citizen can make to the common good, and how deep their commitment is).15 Butenschøn and Meijer also emphasise the importance of what Halliday would call “historical particularism.” This is reflected in their awareness of “the problem of translation” and recognition of how a number of qualifications or modifications are necessary when citizenship theory is applied in the context of Middle Eastern political history. Instead of following the trend in the European debate where the concept of citizenship has been “stretched” in new directions including cultural, global, and ecological citizenship rights, Butenschøn recommends going back to basics when applying the citizenship approach to the Middle East.16 It returns to the basic – and classic17 – question of how political communities are constituted in the first place and the related debate surrounding who the “people” are, how we define “society,” and what criteria we apply to distinguish between those who are and those who are not included in the political community. B ­ utenschøn also brings attention to the usefulness of Davis’s distinction

12 13 14 15 16 17

Butenschøn, “State, Power and Citizenship,” 16; Meijer, “The Struggle for Citizenship,” 1. Ibid., 16. T.H. Marshall, “Citizenship and Social Class (1949),” in Class, Citizenship, and Social Development, ed. T.H. Marshall (New York: Anchor Books, 1965). Butenschøn, “State, Power and Citizenship,” 6; Meijer, “Political Citizenship,” 631–636. Butenschøn, “State, Power and Citizenship,” 7. Cf. Dankwart Rustow, “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,” Comparative Politics 2 (1970): 337–363.

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­between jinsiyya citizenship and muwatana citizenship18 and develops a general ­typology of different normative principles for constituting political communities within state territories.19 As a final “modification” of citizenship theory, it should also be stressed that instead of assuming some universal sequence or expecting a pure replication of some “European model,” one must be attentive to the specific ways in which different kinds of rights have been combined in various phases of the modern political history of the Middle East. Against this background, Meijer describes the long-term political development in (the republican part of) the Arab world and traces broad trends in the trajectory of rights in the region as whole, but emphasises, at the same time, that “each country has its own specific history that has determined its particular content, extent and depth of citizenship rights.”20 In other words, it is important not only to make inter-regional but also intra-regional comparisons in order to highlight similarities and differences in how various kinds of rights in countries within a region have been combined at specific moments and in different places throughout history. Following this brief outline of the basic ideas of citizenship theory and why and how this approach, originally developed in a Western context, may, in a modified version, be useful for examining political developments in the Middle East, the next two sections turn to examine Jordan as a case-study, and explore the Hashemite Kingdom through the lens of a modified citizenship theory.

The Jordanian Trajectory of Citizenship Rights: Like, but not same as…

This section takes as its point of departure Meijer’s idea that we should include the particular history of citizenship in the Middle East alongside the general concepts and analytical distinctions from the European debate. It examines to what extent the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan fits into Meijer’s 18

19 20

Uri Davis, “Conceptions of Citizenship in the Middle East,” in Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications, ed. Nils A. Butenschøn et al. (Syracuse: ­Syracuse University Press, 2000), 49–69; Uri Davis, “Jinsiyya Versus Muwatana: The Question of Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: The Cases of Israel, Jordan and ­Palestine,” Arab Studies Quarterly 17 (1995): 19–50. Butenschøn, “State, Power and Citizenship,” 16. See introduction to this volume, 12–15.

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overall ­narrative about broader trends in the trajectory of citizenship in the Middle East, which mainly draws on experiences from the Arab republics. It thus relates to the classic debate about the similarities and differences within the development of Arab republics and monarchies,21 and provides insights into whether this distinction is important in terms of citizenship rights in the Arab world. A Narrow yet Broad Notion of Citizenship Rights In Meijer’s general account, the notion of modern citizenship rights emerged in the Middle East in the context of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the establishment of the colonial states, and the introduction of the Mandate system.22 At that time, the idea of citizenship was primarily promoted by a new, Westernised elite, who used Western legal and political language of sovereignty and rights in their struggle for national independence, and for civil and political rights. During this era, the distribution of citizenship rights was very narrow, as it was limited to an elite of “notables” claiming to represent the nation and to be the “true citizens,” while also being quite broad, as it was open to foreigners who were allowed to join the nation. In the Jordanian case, a similar pattern can be traced back to the early 1920s, but with a twist on the role of nationalism. Jordan only emerged as a separate country in the early 1920s after Britain had partitioned the area east of the Jordan River from that of the British Palestine Mandate and made the son of Sharif Hussein, Abdallah, emir of the new Emirate of Transjordan. The modern Jordanian state was first and foremost an outcome of extra-regional, European interests rather than an internal aspiration for independence expressed by a national movement. For instance, the new Hashemite ruler, who hailed from the Hijaz, had no specific links to the territory or its people, and as a consequence the notion of the existence of a distinct Jordanian nation was very vague at the time.23 Large parts of the population either identified with their 21

22 23

On this debate, see Russell E. Lucas et al., “Rethinking the Monarchy–Republic Gap in the Middle East,” Journal of Arabian Studies 4 (2014): 161–162; Russell E. Lucas, “Monarchical Authoritarianism: Survival and Political Liberalization in a Middle East Regime Type,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36 (2004): 103–119; Raymond Hinnebusch, “Authoritarian Persistence, Democratization Theory and the Middle East: An Overview and Critique,” Democratization 13 (2006): 373–395. Meijer, “Political Citizenship,” 636–639. Mary C. Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain, and the Making of Jordan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Joseph A. Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

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tribe, looked towards Damascus, Jerusalem, or Hebron, or identified with a larger Arab or Islamic community. Abdallah mainly perceived Jordan as being a stepping stone by which he could realise a much larger regional vision based on a conservative Hashemite form of Pan-Arabism.24 This was reflected not only in various calls to unite Jordan with Syria and Palestine and to re-establish Hashemite control over the Hijaz, but also in the distribution of political rights to non-Jordanians. In addition to British officials in the British-administered mandate, including John Glubb, the famous commander of the Arab Legion, the political elite contained significant numbers of non-Jordanian Arabs, particularly from Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Like Abdallah, most of his advisors thus did not originate from Jordan, and his first government almost resembled a “Syrian exile government” as a result of a significant presence of people from his brother Faisal’s brief rule in Damascus.25 Expanding Citizenship Rights Downwards During the next phase in Meijer’s general account (1930–1950s), the conception of the nation became more exclusive in regard to foreigners and minorities. However, this era also saw an inclusion of much larger segments of society and an expansion of citizenship rights downwards. Through the inclusion and mobilisation of the lower classes, social justice became a dominant theme, together with a marked emphasis on independence and the rejection of foreign domination. In general, this era was marked by a high degree of mobilisation and politicisation, with demands focusing on independence, national unity, and social justice, while individual rights were subordinated to the communal rights of the nation. In the Jordanian case a similar, though not identical, pattern can be traced. As regards nationalism, Abdallah’s conservative Pan-Arabism still existed in the 1940s, but a more distinct Transjordanian nationalism was emerging, 24

25

This kind of Hashemite Pan-Arabism will be further explored in a later section; see also Morten Valbjørn, “Arab Nationalism(s) in Transformation – from Arab Interstate Societies to an Arab-Islamic World Society,” in International Society and the Middle East – English School Theory at the Regional Level, ed. Barry Buzan and Ana Gonzalez-Pelaez (New York: Palgrave, 2009), 152; Laurie A. Brand, “Al-Muhajirin w-al-Ansar – Hashemite Strategies for Managing Communal Identity in Jordan,” in Ethnic Conflict and International Politics in the Middle East, ed. Leonard Binder (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999), 279–306. Beverley Milton-Edwards and Peter Hinchcliffe, Jordan – a Hashemite Legacy (London: Routledge, 2001), 21.

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as reflected in exclusivist calls such as “Transjordan for Transjordanians.”26 This trend was disrupted by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the subsequent annexation of the West Bank in 1950, to which I will return below. As in other parts of the Arab world, wider sections of Jordanian society, including the periphery and the tribes, were increasingly included and granted social rights.27 The quite liberal 1952 Constitution, moreover, expanded civil and political rights considerably and resulted in broad mobilisations and an intense politicisation across Jordanian society. The political scene was very active and saw the emergence of various political parties, strong political debates, mass demonstrations, and other forms of political activism.28 One of the crucial events during this era was the parliamentary elections of October 1956, which were arguably the freest in Jordanian history. These elections resulted in a parliament with a strong Baʿathist and Nasserist presence and a “radical” government led by Sulaiman Nabulsi. His emphasis on social justice and independence from foreign powers, i.e., the Britain, resonated in large segments of the politicised Jordanian public, forcing the new, young, and pro-Western King Hussein, the grandson of Abdallah, to dismiss Glubb and abrogate the Anglo-Jordanian treaty.29 Citizenship Rights and the Authoritarian Bargain This expansion of political and civil rights came to an end in the following phase, as the nature of citizen-state relations was redefined by a new “social contact” that represented what Meijer labels the “authoritarian bargain.”30 In Meijer’s account, this phase was usually initiated by a military coup led by so-called “Free Officers” claiming to speak in the name of the (Arab) nation. The arena of civil and political rights was significantly reduced, and repression became endemic. Power was highly concentrated, the multi-party system was replaced by a one-party system, the parliamentary system was disbanded, leadership personalised – sometimes reflected in cults of personality, e.g. Nasserism – the military came to dominate politics, the role of the security

26

This is further explored in a later section; see also Philip Robins, A History of Jordan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 39. 27 Anne Marie Baylouny, “Militarizing Welfare: Neo-Liberalism and Jordanian Policy,” Middle East Journal 62 (2008): 277–303. 28 On this era in Jordanian history see Betty Anderson, Nationalist Voices in Jordan – the Street and the State (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005). 29 Robins, A History of Jordan, 92. 30 Meijer, “Political Citizenship,” 639–42.

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institutions increased, and, in the new corporatist state, all civil institutions came under state control. As Meijer explains, this era was consequently marked by a massive de-mobilisation and de-politicisation of the population. It did not lead to exclusion per se, however. The new authoritarian states pursued a – selectively – inclusive policy towards major sections of the population. As a kind of compensation for the loss of political and civil rights, large groups of the population were granted new social rights, including the expansion of education, creation of new jobs in the public sector, food subsidies, land reforms, and free health care, among others. In other words, instead of perceiving the changes in the state-society relations during this era as marked by a general decline in and suppression of all kinds of rights, it would be more precise to talk about change in the combination of rights reflecting the aforementioned “authoritarian bargain,” where political and civil rights where exchanged for social rights. At the immediate level, Jordan differs from this republican trajectory. In contrast to Iraq and Egypt, where the monarchies were toppled by Free Officers and replaced by “Arab nationalist revolutionary republics,” Jordan successfully countered the challenges the monarchy faced in King Hussein’s first years of rule, and in the end the young king not only managed to avoid the fate of his cousin – the Hashemite King Faisal of Iraq, who was murdered in the 1958 military coup – but also defeated his domestic opponents. On closer inspection, it appears, however, that the nature of Jordanian state-society relations in the following decades had a number of similarities with those of the Arab republics. In many ways, Jordan represents a monarchical version of the “authoritarian bargain.” In a “pre-emptive palace coup” in 1957, the king dismissed the Nabulsi government, dissolved parliament, banned all political parties, suppressed popular protests with help from regime-loyal parts of the army and kinsmen from major tribes, imprisoned hundreds of leading opposition figures, and declared martial law, which was to last three decades.31 Thus, civil and political rights were strictly limited from 1957 to 1989: except for the Muslim Brotherhood, all political parties and movements were closed down and power was centralised around the king, who relied on the military and the intelligence service (the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate gid). However, as in the Arab republics, broad sections of the population received new and expanded social rights, especially in the 1970s. Owing to the increase in grants and aid from the oil-producing Arab countries, Jordan was, at this 31 Robins, A History of Jordan, 99–102.

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time, an indirect beneficiary of the regional oil boom. This enabled a dramatic expansion of the public sector, with a trebling of the number of civil servants from 1970 to 1985, the swift elimination of unemployment, and the introduction of various social benefits.32 Citizenship Rights and Liberalised Authoritarianism The next phase in Meijer’s general account represents the breakdown of this “authoritarian bargain,” which was a consequence of a gradual unilateral abrogation of the “social contract” of the previous era. This phase began in the 1970s with the introduction of economic opening policies (infitah) aimed at a market economy, followed by privatisations, which in some places culminated in imf structural adjustment programs and the implementation of austerity measures in response to the resultant financial crisis. Food subsidies were reduced, and many of the educational, social, and healthcare obligations the “authoritarian bargain” had been based on were rolled back. The initial response in the 1970s and 1980s was recurrent bread riots and growing protests, which were met with repression by increasingly delegitimised regimes. At the same time, these regimes attempted to make a new bargain with their citizens: the loss of social rights would be compensated by the (re)introduction of more civil and to some extent political rights. In the late 1980s-early 1990s, this was reflected in a brief period of limited political liberalisation.33 However, it soon became clear that these reforms were not meant to promote genuine democratisation, but were introduced by “liberalised autocracies”34 based on the “Lampedusan” logic that “things have to change in order to stay the same.” Accordingly, these new citizenship rights were very selective, and were less about political rights than specific civil rights associated in particular with the rule of law and the right to property, which was important for the parallel economic liberalisations.35 Thus, the state/regime response to the collapse of the “authoritarian bargain” was a combination of repression and pseudo-liberalisation, which were often succeeded by new de-liberalisations. 32 33

34 35

Baylouny, “Militarizing Welfare.” Rex Brynen, Bahgat Korany, and Paul Noble, Political Liberalization & Democratization in the Arab World – Theoretical Perspectives (Boulder co: Lynne Rienner, 1995); Eberhard Kienle, Grand Delusion: Democracy and Economic Reform in Egypt (London: i.b. Tauris, 2001). Daniel Brumberg, “Liberalization Versus Democracy – Understanding Arab Political Reform,” in Carnegie Papers – Middle East Series (2003). Hinnebusch, “Authoritarian Persistence,” 386.

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In Meijer’s general account, the subsequent massive expansion of demands for citizenship rights acquired an urgency similar to the colonial and early independence periods,36 but differed in the sense that demands in the past focused on independence, national unity, and social justice, while individual rights were subordinated to the interest of the nation. This time the demands were much more complex and diverse, with different groups in society subscribing to very different concepts of citizenship and political communities. With the change from passive to active citizenship, de-politicisation to politicisation and de-mobilisation to mobilisation, the state gradually lost control over society, authoritarian regimes weakened, and the context for the emergence of the Arab uprisings was formed. The associated “cacophony of rights and claims” did, at the same time, make it very difficult to reach a consensus on a new “social contract” on how state-society relations should be organised, and the chaotic development since 2011 should, according to Meijer, be seen in this light.37 Once again, the Jordanian development is similar, though not identical, to the general pattern. The “authoritarian bargain” lasted until the end of the 1980s, when the Hashemite regime had to accept that the “years of plenty”38 had come to an end. While the “oil bust” of the mid-1980s had led to a decrease in foreign aid and labour remittances, Jordan initially continued spending, but this strategy became increasingly unviable as the economic crisis worsened. In 1989, therefore, Jordan was forced to turn to the imf to negotiate a Structural Adjustment Plan, which implied the removal of subsidies, privatisations, and cuts in public sector employment. In April 1989, riots erupted in the southern town of Maan, and unrest, at times violent, quickly spread to other hitherto pro-Hashemite parts of the Kingdom, such as Karak, Tafila, and Salt. The protesters demanded the resignation of the government, the repeal of austerity measures, and greater political freedom and national elections. This wave of protests marked the beginning of the so-called “era of reform” of the 1990s. In November 1989, following promises to reinvigorate electoral politics, King Hussein allowed the first full parliamentary elections in decades. In 1991 he lifted the 1957 martial law and promoted the “National Charter” (al-mithaq al-watani), a new “social contract”

36 Meijer, “Political Citizenship,” 642–5. 37 Ibid., 645–52. 38 Warwick Knowles, Jordan since 1989: A Study in Political Economy (London: i.b. Tauris, 2005).

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between the regime and the people of Jordan. The king promised the complete restoration of pluralist and participatory politics, in return for the acknowledgment of King Hussein as the legitimate head of state and de facto acceptance of the retrenchment of social rights in terms of general social welfare cuts.39 Restrictions on freedom of speech and the press were eased and political parties were allowed, while in 1993 the first multi-party parliamentary elections since 1956 were held. Like in the rest of the Arab world, the political openings in the years immediately after 1989, which were among the freest in the Jordan’s modern history, ultimately did not lead to any genuine democratisation. Instead, the political reforms only marked the beginning of what has been described as a “transition to nowhere.”40 The Hashemite regime turned out to be a liberalising autocracy, which always presented itself as being in the midst of a reform process. In reality, this was merely part of a regime-preserving strategy with Janus-faced reforms, whose liberal dimensions were increasingly offset by autocratic counter-­measures from the mid-1990s. For instance, when riots once again broke out in Maan in 1996, the regime responded with an iron fist.41 Thus, at the end of King Hussein’s rule in 1999, Jordan was less free than it had been in 1989 and the early 1950s.42 The crowning of Hussein’s young son Abdallah ii was expected to open a completely new chapter in the political history of the Hashemite Kingdom, one in which Jordan would (re)turn to the political reform process. However, his first decade of rule to a large extent continued the pseudo-reforms of the 1990s. In his rhetoric, the new king emphasised, even more than his father, the importance of democracy and political, economic, and administrative reforms. He launched various ambitious reform initiatives, among them the so-called “National Agenda,” but few were implemented. The parliament was dissolved several times and replaced with rule by royal decree, while elections were marred by vote-buying and gerrymandering. The first decade of the 21st century was therefore more a story of economic rather than political liberalisation.43 39 Robins, A History of Jordan, 93. 40 Brumberg, “Liberalization versus Democracy”; see also Beverley Milton-Edwards, “Jordan and Facade Democracy,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 20 (1993): 191–203; Curtis Ryan, Jordan in Transition from Hussein to Abdallah (Boulder co: Lynne Rienner, 2002). 41 Jillian Schwedler and Lamis Andoni, “Bread Riots in Jordan,” Middle East Report 201 (1996). 42 Morten Valbjørn, “The 2013 Parliamentary Elections in Jordan: Three Stories and Some General Lessons,” Mediterranean Politics 18 (2013): 311–317. 43 Sean Yom, “Jordan: Ten More Years of Autocracy,” Journal of Democracy 20 (2009): 151–166; André Bank, “Rents, Cooptation and Economized Discourse: Three Dimensions of Political Rule in Jordan, Morocco and Syria,” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 14 (2004): 155–181.

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Citizenship Rights during and after the Arab Uprisings The popular response to this mismatch between rhetoric and reality and the decrease in both social and political rights was marked by sporadic protests and brief riots. In contrast to Meijer’s general (republican) account, the overall pattern of reaction in Jordan was, however, less about a change to active citizenship, re-politicisation and mobilisation: in the decade prior to the Arab uprisings, Jordan was marked by disillusion, growing apathy, and cynicism, reflected in an almost complete lack of public interest in the formal political scene. Thus, few people were members of political parties, many chose to boycott the elections, and the parliament was considered irrelevant. Furthermore, such activism as had existed was mainly “apolitical” and directed at emerging “parallel societies” rather than the “formal” political sphere. Against this background, it may come as a surprise that Jordan was one of the first countries after Tunisia and Egypt to experience the Arab Uprisings. In the early days, some predicted that King Abdallah and Queen Rania would soon be “palace hunting in Jeddah,” but in comparison to Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria, the impact of the regional “tunis-ami” has been quite limited in the Hashemite monarchy.44 In order to understand this, it is necessary – but not enough – to understand how the regime reacted to the protests. Instead of the violent and repressive strategies seen elsewhere, the Hashemite regime adopted a multidimensional strategy that included a limited expansion of political and social rights. Thus, instead of turning to overt repression the regime allowed demonstrations and carefully avoided any descent into violent clashes that would initiate the socalled “funeral circles.” It also sought to appease protesters with economic measures including new subsidy packages and an increase in public salaries. The King also quickly dismissed the heavily-criticised prime minister Samir Rifai and promised that “real political reforms” would now be initiated. Subsequently, Jordan has experienced a series of reform initiatives, including various constitutional amendments, the abolition of some restrictions on the freedom of assembly, the creation of a constitutional court, the introduction of new laws on political parties, the implementation of new procedures for appointing the prime minister, and the passing of a new electoral law under which the parliamentary elections of January 2013 took place. Yet on closer inspection it becomes clear that many of these initiatives are still Janus-faced, indicating that the above-mentioned “Lampedusan” regime-preserving rationale has not

44

For an account of the first years of Arab uprisings in Jordan see for instance Curtis Ryan, “Oasis or Mirage? Jordan’s Unlikely Stability in a Changing Middle East,” World Politics Review (January 15, 2015); Valbjørn, “The 2013 Parliamentary Elections,” 311–317.

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been abandoned. Critics find this suspicion further supported by the striking similarities between Abdallah ii’s response to the Arab Uprisings and his father’s response to the uprisings of 1989. After a brief political opening, the latter resulted in two decades of “transition to nowhere,” and according to some critics the 2013 parliamentary elections represent, if anything, the continuing “success of authoritarianism.”45 To understand the rather limited impact of the Arab Uprisings on the small Hashemite Kingdom and why the regime has been so successful in weathering the initial storm, it is important but not sufficient to pay attention to the regime’s responses. It is also necessary to look at the composition of the protesters and how their demands resembled the kind of “cacophony of rights and claims” that Meijer speaks about in his general account. Compared to the period before 2011, the protest scene had not only increased in size; it had also been transformed. In addition to well-known actors such as Islamists and leftists, it now included new elements such as local youth groups and popular movements, often from Transjordanian communities, traditionally pro-palace Transjordanian tribes, Salafis, and military veterans. Unlike protesters in some other parts of the Arab world, who had called for the ousting of their ruler, the Jordanian protesters’ demands were reformist rather than revolutionary – change was supposed to take place within the framework of the Hashemite monarchy. In fact, one of the few things the protesters would agree on, besides the common call against corruption and for “social justice,” was that they were in favour of the king. Thus, with very few exceptions the critique was directed at the (de facto powerless) government rather than (the de facto ruler) King Abdallah. Beyond that, the protesters had very different demands: some called for genuine democratic reforms that would give the parliament real power, whereas, for example, the Salafis rejected democracy as un-Islamic. Some wanted changes in the electoral law, which through gerrymandering favours traditionally pro-Hashemite areas of Jordan, while others argued that this would only bring Palestinians to power at the expense of the Transjordanian population. Some supported the traditional opposition groups and civil society movements, while others saw them as representing a stubborn old generation that was just as much a part of the problem as the regime. While many called for more social justice and argued against neo-liberal reforms and widespread corruption, the protesters were internally divided as to the extent to which this should have implications for privileges to specific groups, including military veterans and some 45

Ziad Abu-Rish, “Romancing the Throne: The New York Times and the Endorsement of Authoritarianism in Jordan,” in Jadaliyya Blog (2013); see also Valbjørn, “The 2013 Parliamentary Elections,” 313–315.

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­ ransjordanian tribes. In addition to these domestic issues, the opposition was T also divided on Jordan’s position on the Syrian civil war and the (brief) rise of Islamists in elections across the region. While these internal divisions had, elsewhere in the region, led to chaos, the Jordanian regime successfully used them to upgrade its divide-and-rule strategy and to take the steam out of the protests. In spite of these differences during the Arab uprisings, the larger picture of the long-term development of the Hashemite monarchy reveals a pattern – in particular in the content of citizenship rights (the rights citizens have or claim) – that may not be identical with but is quite similar to the phases outlined in Meijer’s general account of the trajectory of citizenship in the Middle East, which is based on the Arab republics. As will become clear in the following section, this does not mean that more distinct features in the Jordanian trajectory of citizenship cannot be identified, at least not in terms of the extent and depth of citizenship.

Back to Basics – What and Where is Jordan and Who are the Real Jordanians?

When, at the turn of the millennium, Butenschøn et al. brought citizenship theory into the study of Arab politics, they wanted to show that the usefulness of this approach was not restricted to the Western context on which it was originally based.46 As explained in the introduction to this chapter Butenschøn suggested a “back-to-basics” approach, with a focus on how political communities are constituted in the first place, instead of following the contemporary trend in the citizenship debate of “stretching” the concept of citizenship in new directions to cover post-industrial discourses on state-society relations.47 As part of the rediscovery of some of the more basic questions surrounding citizenship, Butenschøn draws attention to Davis distinction between jinsiyya citizenship and muwatana citizenship.48 The former refers to “passport citizenship,” in the sense of civil, political, and social rights towards the state; the latter refers to belonging to the country, watan, the right of abode and to public land and water; the two concepts denote symbolically the distinction between those who are rightful members of the family of the house and those 46 47 48

Butenschøn, Davis, and Hassassian, Citizenship and the State. See also Davis, “Jinsiyya Versus Muwatana.” Butenshøn, “State, Power and Citizenship,” 7. Davis, “Conceptions of Citizenship in the Middle East.” See also Davis, “Jinsiyya Versus Muwatana.”

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who are just guests, tenants, or relatives. In addition, Butenschøn develops a new typology of normative principles for constituting political communities within state territories. The purpose of the typology is to identify the variation of political systems with a particular attention to challenges of building democracy in conflict-ridden societies where politicised group identities and a weakly entrenched state idea threaten the integrity of the state. In this sense the typology can be considered as an extension of Arend Lijpart’s “consociational democracy.” It has two axes. Vertical: Constitutional principles for distributing rights between citizens; Horizontal: Levels of territorial integration. The three main positions on the vertical axis is singularism (laws and political institutions are designed with the purpose of securing a dominant position of a particular group in society and the state primarily embodies the aspirations of that group); pluralism (rights are distributed on the basis of group affiliations with reference to an agreed-upon key for distribution, leaving state institutions as arenas for inter-group negotiations, in principle without preferential treatment of any particular group); and universalism (the principle of one-personone-vote where group affiliation in principle is irrelevant for distribution of rights). Along the horizontal axis, Butenschøn shows how it is possible to distinguish between the unitary state, the fragmented state (federations, unions, etc.), and separate states (as outcome, i.e., dissolution of empires or separation of previously unitary or fragmented states as outcome of civil wars or peaceful separation). Combining positions on the two axes indicate the constitutional and territorial dimensions of political regimes as possible outcomes of conflicts over the political organisation of a state territory. While these back-to-basics questions of how political communities are constituted are, to some extent, part of any state/nation-building process, they have held a particularly prominent position in the brief history of the small Jordanian monarchy. Since the modern state of Jordan came into being in the early 1920s, there has been a prolonged and hotly-contested debate about “where is Jordan,” “what is Jordan,” and “who are the real Jordanians.” The changing ways in which these questions have been addressed have not only influenced views surrounding the content but also the depth and extent of citizenship in Jordan, and given rise to quite different strategies in the Hashemite regime’s approach to fragmented identities and group conflicts. Where is Jordan? One reason the extent and depth of citizenship has been no less contested than the question about its specific content can be attributed to Jordan’s a­ mbiguous and changeable relations with the West Bank in particular and Palestine more

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generally. This is reflected in the waxing and waning of the territorial size of the country and in Jordan’s demographic composition of Transjordanians (a person who hails from the territory that was Jordan before 1948) and Palestinian Jordanians (someone originating in the British Mandate territory of Palestine). Before the 1920s, no territory, people, or nationalist movement was designated, or designated itself, as Transjordanian,49 and, as famously noted by Avi Shlaim, Jordan originally appeared as “a political anomaly and geographical nonsense.”50 Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the area was initially part of the British Palestine Mandate, but by 1921 the area beyond the Jordan River was separated from Palestine and two years later recognised by Britain as the Emirate of Transjordan. In the following decades, Abdallah i made various claims to Palestine based on the argument that “the division between Palestine and Transjordan is artificial and wasteful,”51 and, after the Arab-­Israeli War of 1948, the West Bank and East Jerusalem came under Jordanian control. In 1950 the territory was formally annexed as part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; it became part of the Jordanian political community, and citizenship rights were subsequently extended to include West Bankers. In 1967 the Hashemite monarchy shrank once again as a consequence of the Arab debacle in the Arab-Israeli war, in which Jordan lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel. Over the next two decades Jordan continued to make claims on the West Bank, which was considered occupied Jordanian territory. The Jordanian authorities accordingly regarded the population of the West Bank as part of the Jordanian political community. Thus, even though the West Bank was under Israeli control, Jordan maintained its administrative, economic, and legal ties to the West Bank after 1967: there was a Jordanian ministry for the occupied territories’ affairs, Jordan employed more than 24,000 civil servants on the West Bank, and financed the religious institutions in these territories. As West Bankers were considered Jordanians citizens, they were eligible for Jordanian passports and (in principle) had the same political rights as other Jordanians. This was reflected in the presence of West Bankers in the Jordanian parliament.52

49 Massad, Colonial Effects, 11. 50 Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan: King ʿAbdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 31. 51 Cited in Daniel Pipes and Adam Garfinkle, “Is Jordan Palestine,” Commentary 86 (1988), 40. 52 Marc Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres the International Politics of Jordan’s Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 82; Robins, A History of Jordan, 163.

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All this changed on July 31, 1988, when King Hussein, impressed by the first Palestinian Intifada, suddenly declared that Jordan would sever all “legal and administrative ties” with the West Bank. The West Bankers would, in consequence, lose their Jordanian citizenship rights and were henceforth to be represented by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (plo). This detachment of the West Bank from Jordan was subsequently confirmed in the Israeli-­ Palestinian Oslo Accord of 1993 and the subsequent Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty of 1994, at the signing of which Shimon Peres affirmed that “Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine.”53 As a consequence, the pre-1988 ambiguity regarding Jordan’s links to Palestine and hence the territorial size of the Jordanian community has become less pronounced in recent decades than earlier. What is Jordan and Who are the “Real” Jordanians? While the question “where is Jordan” (i.e. should the West Bank be part of Jordan) might have become less intense, the related questions “what is Jordan” and “who are the real Jordanians” are still contested and affect the nature of the citizenship debate in the country. These two questions are closely related to the demographic situation within Jordan, which has changed dramatically since the modern Jordan was born in the early 1920s. Following the 1948 Israeli-Arab War and the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank, the size of the population trebled. Thus, for each Transjordanian there were now two Palestinians. While this changed once again following the loss of the West Bank in 1967, most observers estimate that at least half of the Jordanian population are today Palestinians (although inter-group marriage etc. makes it increasingly difficult – and artificial – to make a clear distinction between these two groups). This demographic reality has given rise to long-standing discussions about “what is Jordan,” “who are the real Jordanians,” and hence who is entitled to full citizenship rights. During most of Jordan’s modern history, these questions have been addressed in a variety of ways by actors inside and outside the monarchy, as reflected in claims that Jordan’s “true nature” is Jordanian, Arab, Islamic, Transjordanian, or Palestinian, etc. Perhaps one of the most intense expressions of this issue is the question of the place of the Palestinian Jordanians in Jordan and whether “Jordan is Palestine.” During the history of modern Jordan, this notion has existed in a variety of versions and been advanced by very different actors. In the very early days of the Jordanian emirate, the notion was, as mentioned above, closely related to Abdallah i’s vision of uniting Transjordan and Palestine under Hashemite rule. 53 Lynch, State Interests, 183.

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However, on the Israeli right there is also a long tradition for arguing that Jordan, due to its demographic composition, constitutes “the alternative homeland,” and for this reason “the problem is clearly not the lack of homeland for the Palestinian Arabs. That homeland is Trans-Jordan or Eastern Palestine,” as Yitzhak Shamir once argued.54 In addition to the Hashemite and the Israeli versions of how “Jordan is Palestine,” there is also a Palestinian variant. It briefly gained momentum in the late 1960s, when Jordan’s loss of the West Bank led to open rivalry between the Hashemite regime and the plo about who was entitled to represent the Palestinians not only in the occupied territories but also in Jordan.55 As part of this rivalry, the plo was creating a “state within a state” inside Jordan, and Palestinian groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (pflp) even called for the overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy. In 1970, this resulted in the so-called Black September civil war between King Hussein’s armed forces and Palestinian groups, and the subsequent expulsion of the plo from Jordan.56 While Jordan has not experienced such open and violent confrontation since 1970, the questions “what is Jordan” and “who are the real Jordanians” are still a source of inter-communal tension, and the Transjordanian/Palestinian Jordanian divide still influences the views on the extent and depth of citizenship in Jordan. As a way of grasping this tension, it is useful to draw on Davis distinction between jinsiyya and muwatana citizenship (see above).57 For instance, unlike Palestinians in Lebanon, Palestinians in Jordan do, from a jinsiyya citizenship perspective, have the same citizenship rights as the Transjordanian part of the population. But when it comes to muwatana citizenship there is significant debate in Jordan about whether Palestinians should be considered as “guests” (who, sometime in the future, will return to their “own” country, Palestine, and therefore should be grateful for the hospitality provided by the Transjordanian part of the population), or as full members of Jordanian society (for historical reasons and because many of them have lived in Jordan and contributed to society for generations). The intensity of this debate varies, but 54

55 56 57

Pipes and Garfinkle, “Is Jordan Palestine,” 35; on this version of the “Jordan is Palestine”debate see also Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres; Marc Lynch, “Jordan’s Identity and Interests,” in Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East, ed. Michael Barnett and Shibley Telhami (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002): 26–57; Mark Tessler, “The Intifada and Political Discourse in Israel,” Journal of Palestine Studies 19 (1990): 43–61. Lynch, “Jordan’s Identity and Interests,” 41, Milton-Edwards and Hinchcliffe, Jordan – a Hashemite Legacy, 41. Joseph Nevo, “September 1970 in Jordan: A Civil War?” Civil Wars 10 (2008): 217–230. Davis, “Jinsiyya versus Muwatana”; Davis “Conceptions of Citizenship.”

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it is a constant, latent issue in the Jordanian debate that re-emerges from time to time with claims and counter-claims about how one group or the other is too privileged in comparison with the other. Reactions to various political and economic reform initiatives have been affected by this Transjordanian/Palestinian Jordanian divide. Thus, the economic liberalisations and privatisations of the 2000s became even more controversial because they may have changed the balance between the Transjordanian part of the population, which dominates the public sector, and the Palestinian, which has a much stronger presence in the private sector. Palestinian businessmen would therefore benefit more from these reforms, critics argued. During the Arab Uprisings the Transjordanian/Palestinian Jordanian divide re-emerged. Even though the protests were mainly driven by Transjordanians, there were attempts to de-legitimise the protests by – unsubstantiated – claims that they were orchestrated by “disloyal Palestinians and Islamists” wanting to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy in favour of Palestinian Islamist rule, or that they would lead Jordan into a new “Black September.” The origins of such claims and rumours are anything but clear. Some attribute them to so-called “Transjordanian loyalists,” others see the “hidden hand” of the gid, which, the argument goes, tried to divide the protesters and turn the loyalty of the Transjordanian part of the population back towards the Hashemite regime. No matter what, it is clear that the regime is very much aware of the potential threat to the political stability represented by the latent Transjordanian/Palestinian Jordanian divide.

A Typology of Hashemite Responses to Fragmented Identities and Group Conflicts At the same time, it is important to understand how the Hashemite regime has, over time, reacted in very different ways to fragmented identities and group conflicts in Jordan. Instead of speaking about a specific Hashemite model of relating to society, it is, therefore, necessary to talk about different, more or less distinct models. Some resemble the general models in Butenschøn’s typology of different normative principles for constituting political communities within state territories (see above), while others are harder to capture in this typology, which suggests the need to expand it. In simplified terms, four models for the Hashemite regime’s response to fragmented identities and group conflicts can be identified. The first is the Arab-Islamic Hashemite model. The notion of a distinctly Jordanian identity is not important in this model. Instead, it focuses on ­membership of a larger Arab and/or Islamic community, not least loyalty to the Hashemite ruler. Brand describes the model as follows:

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in the notion of a Jordanian identity was a conservative variant of panArabism. That is, as the regime developed, being a citizen of the kingdom was not defined in exclusivist terms. The territory had welcomed Circassians, Chechens, Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, and Palestinians and was to be a place in which all could live together. At the same time, such an approach provided the bases for legitimizing Hejazis – the Hashemites – as rulers in a territory not even broadly defined as their home (or their own). Hence, for the ruling family, being a Jordanian has not meant tracing ancestral ties back to long present or resident tribes or clans. To be a Jordanian was (indeed had to be) being an Arab (or Arab speaking, as the Circassians and Chechens became) and to be loyal to a larger Arab nation and the Hashemite monarchy.58 An early example of this model can be identified in Abdallah i’s very early years of rule. As explained, the new emir, who originated from the Hijaz and had no previous links to the territory, primarily perceived Jordan as a stepping stone for realising a much larger regional vision, based on a conservative Hashemite form of Pan-Arabism, in which Jordan would unite with Palestine, Syria, and the Hijaz under Hashemite rule. This explains why the first Jordanian government had a strong presence of non-Jordanian Arabs rather than Jordanians and why the fabled “Arab Legion” was not an exclusively Jordanian army in which recruits would be transformed into “real Jordanians,” but a truly Arab Legion, as it also recruited from tribes outside of Jordan. In the first decades of the country’s existence, up to 30 per cent of the forces were mercenaries from other Arab countries.59 Another version of this model can be found in the way Abdallah i addressed the changed demography following the annexation of the West Bank in 1950. Instead of attempting to “transjordanise” the Palestinian population or to construct a new, distinctly Jordanian identity embracing both groups, he turned to the Hashemite form of Pan-Arabism and argued that to be a Jordanian was to be an Arab and this implied loyalty both to a larger Arab nation and to the Hashemites because of their special place in Arab-Islamic history. With reference to the latter, Abdallah was fond of depicting Transjordanians and Palestinians as two branches of the Arab-Islamic community

58 Brand, “Al-Muhajrin W-Al-Ansar,” 287–288. 59 Robins, A History of Jordan, 43; see also Valbjørn, “The Soldier King.”

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similar to the Ansar, those who lived in Medina and welcomed the Prophet, and the Muhajirun, those who fled from Mecca to Medina.60 The second model can be labelled Transjordanisation. It has similarities with Butenschøn’s “hegemonic system” based on “singularism” and the “unitary state.” In the general typology, the state community is constituted by a single and specific collective identity embodied by the state. It is organic in the sense that the constituent community is considered an indivisible whole whose existence and interests have a superior moral value, and it is programmatic in the sense that the state is seen as having a historical mission in realising the constituent community’s fundamental aspiration. The state is not, therefore, neutral in the way it relates to group identities and inter-group conflicts but is more or less partisan in the promotion of the status and interests of the titular community. Different citizenship statuses are therefore accorded to different groups, who thus become first- and second-class citizens.61 One variant of this “transjordanisation” model can be found in 1930–1940s Jordan, where a more distinct Transjordanian nationalism was emerging in parallel with Abdallah’s conservative Pan-Arabism. As reflected in the slogan “Transjordan for Transjordanians”62 (see above), it expressed resentment of the prominence of outsiders – British as well as non-Jordanian Arabs – and an idea about how the Jordanian state first and foremost should promote the status and interests of the Transjordanian population. Another variant can be found in the 1970s, with the attempt to “Transjordanise” the country, which was partly a reaction to the loss of the West Bank in 1967 and the “Black September” civil war of 1970. Transjordanians were prioritised in government positions, and the Palestinian presence in the growing public sector was minimised, particularly in security-related sectors, and disproportionate amounts of the state budget were allocated to areas dominated by Transjordanians. The socalled (Trans)Jordanian nationalists also argued that Jordanian passport holders on the East Bank who identified primarily as Palestinians should return to a plo-controlled entity when conditions allowed, and these Palestinians accordingly had a lower position than the Transjordanians in the “hierarchy of citizenships.”63 60 Brand, “Al-Muhajrin W-Al-Ansar.” 281. 61 Butenschøn, “State, Power and Citizenship,” 18–19. 62 Robins, A History of Jordan, 39. 63 Ibid., 135; Joseph Nevo, “Changing Identities in Jordan,” in Israel, the Hashemites and the Palestinians – the Fateful Triangle, ed. Efraim Karsh and P.R.  Kumaraswamy (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 195. See also Adnan Abu Odeh, Jordanians, P­ alestinians, and the Hashemite Kingdom in the Middle East Peace Process (Washington dc: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1999).

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A third model is the United Arab Kingdom-model. This model is closer to “pluralist” in Butenschøn’s terminology, in the sense that the national community is seen as consisting of separate subgroups without a programmatic predominance accorded to any of them. The role of the state is not to promote a specific communal identity but to facilitate politics of compromise that give the different groups a say, and in the general model the government itself will be composed of leading representatives from these groups. Citizenship becomes an indirect relationship between the citizen and the state because group affiliation determines the nature of the relationship.64 Although not identical, the never-realised vision of a United Arab Kingdom (uak) shares some similarities with Butenschøn’s “pluralism.” This vision was presented by King Hussein in 1972 as part of his unsuccessful strategy to unite the two banks of the Jordan River. uak would be a state comprising two autonomous provinces, the East Bank and the West Bank, each with its own parliament and administration and with Amman and Jerusalem as respective centres of government. At the federal level there would be a joint parliament with equal representation of Palestinians and Transjordanians; a federal government with powers limited to a restricted set of functional areas including foreign and defence policy; a central supreme court; and a single army. Amman would be the capital of the Kingdom, where King Hussein would rule as head of state.65 The fourth model is the Jordanisation model, which, at least at the formal level, is close to the principle of “universalism” in Butenschøn’s typology. This refers to the normative presumption that group-specific identities within a political community are irrelevant when it comes to each individual member’s status and rights vis-à-vis the state. The political community constitutes the universe within which every person is considered equal, and rights and obligations are anchored in the individual as citizen.66 This model can be identified in the various “grand visions” launched since King Abdallah ii ascended the throne in 1999, including “the New Jordan” programme (al-Urdun al-Jadid), the “Jordan First” programme (al-Urdun Awwalan), the “We Are All Jordan” (Kulna al-Urdun) programme, and the “National Agenda” programme.67 Basically, these programmes are all about how Jordan is supposed to be a modern and liberal country, where people first and foremost 64 Butenschøn, “State, Power and Citizenship,” 23. 65 Robins, A History of Jordan, 137. 66 Butenschøn, “State, Power and Citizenship,” 26. 67 André Bank and Morten Valbjørn, “Bringing the (Arab) Regional Level Back In… – Jordan in the New Arab Cold War,” Middle East Critique 19 (2010): 303–319.

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identify with a Jordanian identity rather than sub- or supra-state identities; where Jordan’s interest should take precedence over other regional, sectarian or subgroup concerns; and where rights and obligations should be anchored in the individual as citizen and not related to their membership of various subgroups in society. While the current Hashemite regime has been very keen, in its rhetoric, to promote this universal Jordanisation model, even a cursory examination of its actual policies reveals a very different practice. The previous sections showed how the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has followed a pattern – in particular when it comes to the content of citizenship rights (the rights citizens have or claim) – that is similar to, though not exactly the same as, its republican counterparts. The reintroduction, in this section, of some of the basic debates in classic citizenship theory relating to the question about how political communities are constituted has, at the same time, brought attention to a number of more distinct features in the Jordanian trajectory of citizenship, not at least in terms of the extent and depth of citizenship, and in the specific strategies for how the Hashemite regime has related to fragmented identities and group conflicts. Conclusions As part of the self-reflection among scholars following the Arab Uprisings, citizenship theory has been reintroduced to the study of Arab politics as a tool to examine the long-term political trends preceding the Uprisings that began in 2011 and to understand their possible implications for future Arab politics. In line with this renewed interest in citizenship theory, this chapter has conducted a case study of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, as perceived through the prism of citizenship. While the major part of this chapter has explored political trends in the small Hashemite kingdom, this exploration does, however, also carry a number of lessons for the more general debate on citizenship theory in the Middle East. First and foremost, the chapter does support the notion that, despite its Western origins, citizenship is also a useful lens to grasp major political trends in the Middle East and contrary to the prevalent “democratisation and authoritarianism paradogma” citizenship theory offers a more fine-grained vocabulary that appears better at acknowledging dimensions of both change and continuity and similarities and differences at state and society levels. At the same time, the chapter also underscores the point that there is a need for a kind of “modified citizenship theory” in order to realise the potential of this approach. This relates to another general lesson that concerns the

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­importance of making comparisons in citizenship theory as a way of highlighting similarities and differences in the trajectory of citizenship rights not only between but also within regions. Thus, while the Jordanian case-study, in general terms, supports Meijer’s point about how it is important to pay attention to how the Middle Eastern history of citizenship rights is different from the Western, the specific Jordanian trajectory, particularly when it comes to the depth and extent of citizenship, does, at the same time, illustrate why it is just as important to be attentive to intra-regional differences. Some of these can be attributed to the fact that each country will have its own specific history that influences the particular trajectory of citizenship rights, but there may also be more general patterns; for instance, the Jordanian case points to the need for a better understanding of whether and, if so, how (Middle Eastern) republics and monarchies are similar to or differ from each other when it comes to the content, extent, and depth of citizenship rights. A final general lesson emerging from the Jordanian case-study concerns the call to go “back-to-basics” to rediscover the classic citizenship theory debate that revolved around the fundamental questions of who are the people, how are political communities constituted, and how a distinction between “us” and “them” can be drawn. These classic questions were very useful in examining some of the more distinct features concerning the depth and extent of citizenship in Jordan, but they do also appear to be – increasingly – important in other parts of the region, where the weakening or even disintegration of existing states and the (re)emergence of sub-and supra-state identities based on tribe or sect have given rise to a debate about whether we are witnessing the “end of the Sykes-Picot state order” in favour new forms of political communities. Bibliography Abu-Rish, Ziad. “Romancing the Throne: The New York Times and the Endorsement of Authoritarianism in Jordan,” Jadaliyya Blog, February 3, 2013. Accessed on January 25, 2016, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/9949/romancing-the-throne_the -new-york-times-and-the-en. Abu Odeh, Adnan. Jordanians, Palestinians, and the Hashemite Kingdom in the Middle East Peace Process. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1999. Anderson, Betty. Nationalist Voices in Jordan – the Street and the State. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. Bank, André. “Rents, Cooptation and Economized Discourse: Three Dimensions of Political Rule in Jordan, Morocco and Syria.” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 14 (2004): 155–181.

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Bank, André, and Morten Valbjørn. “Bringing the (Arab) Regional Level Back In … – Jordan in the New Arab Cold War.” Middle East Critique 19 (2010): 303–319. Baylouny, Anne Marie. “Militarizing Welfare: Neo-Liberalism and Jordanian Policy.” Middle East Journal 62 (2008): 277–303. Brand, Laurie A. “Al-Muhajrin W-Al-Ansar – Hashemite Strategies for Managing Communal Identity in Jordan.” In Ethnic Conflict and International Politics in the Middle East, edited by Leonard Binder, 279–306. Gainesville FL: University Press of Florida, 1999. Brumberg, Daniel. “Liberalization Versus Democracy – Understanding Arab Political Reform.” Carnegie Papers – Middle East Series, 2003. Brynen, Rex, Bahgat Korany, and Paul Noble. Political Liberalization & Democratization in the Arab World – Theoretical Perspectives. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995. Butenschøn, Nils A., Uri Davis, and Manuel Hassassian (eds). Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Davis, Uri. “Jinsiyya Versus Muwatana: The Question of Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: The Cases of Israel, Jordan and Palestine.” Arab Studies Quarterly 17 (1995): 19–50. Davis, Uri. “Conceptions of Citizenship in the Middle East.” In Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications, edited by Nils A. Butenschøn, Uri Davis and Manuel Hassassian, 49–69. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Gause, F. Gregory. “The Middle East Academic Community and the ‘Winter of Arab Discontent’.” In Seismic Shift – Understanding Change in the Middle East, edited by Ellen Laipson, 11–27. Washington DC: The Henry L. Stimson Center, 2011. Halliday, Fred. Islam & the Myth of Confrontation – Religion and Politics in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris, 1995. Hinnebusch, Raymond. “Authoritarian Persistence, Democratization Theory and the Middle East: An Overview and Critique.” Democratization 13 (2006): 373–395. Kienle, Eberhard. Grand Delusion: Democracy and Economic Reform in Egypt. London: I.B. Tauris, 2001. Knowles, Warwick. Jordan since 1989: A Study in Political Economy. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. Lucas, Russell E. “Monarchical Authoritarianism: Survival and Political Liberalization in a Middle East Regime Type.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36 (2004): 103–119. Lucas, Russell E., Thomas Demmelhuber, and Claudia Derichs. “Rethinking the Monarchy–­Republic Gap in the Middle East.” Journal of Arabian Studies 4 (2014): 161–162. Lynch, Marc. State Interests and Public Spheres the International Politics of Jordan’s Identity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

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Lynch, Marc. “Jordan’s Identity and Interests.” In Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East, edited by Michael Barnett and Shibley Telhami, 26–57. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002. Marshall, T.H. “Citizenship and Social Class.” In Class, Citizenship, and Social Development, edited by T.H. Marshall, 71–133. New York: Anchor Books, 1965. (first edition, 1949). Massad, Joseph A. Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. Meijer, Roel. “Political Citizenship and Social Movements in the Arab World. In Handbook of Political Citizenship and Social Movements, edited by Hein Anton van der Heijden, 628–660. Edward Elgar Publisher, 2014. Meijer, Roel. “The Struggle for Citizenship: The Key to Understanding the Arab Uprisings.” NOREF Report, 2014. Milton-Edwards, Beverley. “Jordan and Facade Democracy.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 20 (1993): 191–203. Milton-Edwards, Beverley, and Peter Hinchcliffe. Jordan – a Hashemite Legacy. London: Routledge, 2001. Nevo, Joseph. “Changing Identities in Jordan.” In Israel, the Hashemites and the Palestinians – the Fateful Triangle, edited by Efraim Karsh and P.R. Kumaraswamy, 187–208. London: Frank Cass, 2003. Nevo, Joseph. “September 1970 in Jordan: A Civil War?” Civil Wars 10 (2008): 217–230. Pipes, Daniel, and Adam Garfinkle. “Is Jordan Palestine.” Commentary 86 (1988): 35–42. Project on the Middle East Political Science, POMEPS. “Reflections on the Arab Uprisings.” In POMEPS Studies, no. 10, 2014. Robins, Philip. A History of Jordan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Rustow, Dankwart. “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model.” Comparative Politics 2 (1970): 337–363. Ryan, Curtis. Jordan in Transition from Hussein to Abdallah. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002. Ryan, Curtis. “Oasis or Mirage? Jordan’s Unlikely Stability in a Changing Middle East.” World Politics Review, January 15 (2015). Schwedler, Jillian, and Lamis Andoni. “Bread Riots in Jordan.” Middle East Report 201 (1996). Shlaim, Avi. Collusion across the Jordan: King ʿAbdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Tessler, Mark. “The Intifada and Political Discourse in Israel.” Journal of Palestine Studies 19 (1990): 43–61. Valbjørn, Morten. “Arab Nationalism(S) in Transformation – from Arab Interstate Societies to an Arab-Islamic World Society.” In International Society and the Middle

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East – English School Theory at the Regional Level, edited by Barry Buzan and Ana Gonzalez-Pelaez, 140–169. New York: Palgrave, 2009. Valbjørn, Morten. “The 2013 Parliamentary Elections in Jordan: Three Stories and Some General Lessons.” Mediterranean Politics 18 (2013): 311–317. Valbjørn, Morten. “Reflections on Self-Reflections – on Framing the Analytical Implications of the Arab Uprisings for the Study of Arab Politics.” Democratization 22 (2015): 218–238. Wilson, Mary C. King Abdullah, Britain, and the Making of Jordan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Yom, Sean. “Jordan: Ten More Years of Autocracy.” Journal of Democracy 20 (2009): 151–166.

chapter 7

Social Contract in the Al Saʿud Monarchy: From Subjects to Citizens? Ida Nicolaisen Almestad and Stig Stenslie March 11, 2011 was declared by Saudi activists to be a “Day of Rage” (thawrat Hunayn).1 Saudis are facing many of the same challenges as people in other Arab countries – authoritarian rule, corruption, and socioeconomic problems, which in particular affect the country’s youth. But few Saudis took to the streets. Only minor demonstrations took place, primarily in the Shiʿidominated coastal cities such as Qatif, in the Eastern Province. The spring apparently never came to Saudi Arabia. However – as this article aims to show – political awareness is on the rise among broader segments of the Saudi population. The Arab Spring inspired several groups to articulate demands for civil and political rights, based on self-identification as citizens. This tendency is particularly apparent online, where Salafis, Shiʿi-activists, women, and liberals all voice their demands for rights, demands that reflect the materialisation of new concepts of what being a Saudi Arabian citizen entails. Citizenship refers to a judicial relationship between the state and the individual, and it defines the citizen’s rights vis-à-vis the state. T.H. Marshall places citizenship rights in three categories: political (right to vote, right to found a party, freedom of association), civil (equality before the law, freedom of speech, personal freedom), and social rights (welfare services, education, health services).2 The citizens of Saudi Arabia have, primarily, social rights. A citizen benefits from a “cradle to grave” welfare state, made possible thanks to oil revenues. In return, the citizen has to swear loyalty (bayʿa) to the ruler (wali al-amr). Saudi Arabia has the dubious honour of being included, without exception, in Freedom House’s annual list of the “least free states” in the world – receiving 1 Thawrat Hunayn, literally translated as the “Hunayn Revolution,” is a historical reference to the battle of Hunayn. The battle of Hunayn is mentioned in the Qurʾan and was fought between the Prophet Muhammad and his followers and a Bedouin tribe near Taʾif in 630. 2 Thomas Humphrey Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950).

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the lowest possible scores in the political rights and civil liberties categories.3 Increased political awareness, demands for civil and political rights, and the call for a new social contract between the state and its citizens are serious challenges for the royal family, Al Saʿud. Moreover, the mobilisation for citizen rights unveils the limitations of the so-called rentier state. In academic literature, Saudi Arabia has been described as a rentier state par excellence. The royal family’s rental incomes are first and foremost from oil sales, as well as from profits from overseas investments made possible by petrodollars; only a small part of the kingdom’s income is derived from taxes and levies. According to the theory, putting it somewhat simplistically, the regime in a rentier state is in a position to “buy” the citizens’ allegiance through an active redistribution policy. A social contract is thus established where the ruling party guarantees the citizens’ material comfort, while in return the citizens accept the ruler’s right to rule. This perspective suggests that economic welfare is the primary variable in influencing citizens’ political interests, including their expectations of civil and political rights.4 As public life in Saudi Arabia is regulated by restrictive laws on media, public assemblies, and political participation,5 the Internet is the main arena for criticism in Saudi Arabia. While there are occasionally critical articles in the Saudi press, here the censorship is stricter. The Internet has contributed to increased political awareness for a generation of Saudis that has been raised under authoritarian rule, and therefore did not have access to arenas of political debate before.6 As for social media, Twitter is particularly significant in Saudi Arabia; the number of Twitter users rose 3000 per cent from 2011 to 2012, and today there are more than five million active tweeters, who together post more than 150 million tweets every day. In 2013, Twitter continued to expand in Saudi Arabia, and the country is now the number one on earth for per-capita .

3 Bayly Philip Christopher Winder, “The Hashtag Generation: The Twitter Phenomenon in Saudi Society,” Journal of Georgetown University, Qatar Middle Eastern Studies Student Association (2014). Accessed June 20, 2013, http://www.qscience.com/doi/abs/10.5339/messa.2014.6. 4 Numerous researchers have explained the survival of the Saudi monarchy through reference to the oil income; these include Giacomo Luciani and Hazem Beblawi, The Rentier State (London: Croom Helm, 1987); Jill Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Kiren Aziz Chaudhry, The Price of Wealth: Economies and Institutions in the Middle East (Ithaca ny: Cornell University Press, 1997); and F. Gregory Gause iii, Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States (New York: Council of Foreign Relations, 1994). 5 Stig Stenslie, Regime Stability in Saudi Arabia: The Challenge of Succession (New York: Routledge, 2012). 6 Philip N. Howard and Hussein M. Muzammil, Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 3–4.

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usage: about 51 per cent of Saudi Internet users have a Twitter account, while a third, or 32 per cent, of these are active monthly Twitter users.7 This article is based on an analysis of online discussions around citizen rights that took place in the wake of the Arab uprisings, in the years 2011–14. We will focus exclusively on those who are Saudi citizens, which means that we will not include stateless people (bidun) and foreign workers. Our focus is thus not on who are citizens, but rather on how citizenship is defined and what it entails with regard to rights and duties.

The “Day of Rage” Cancelled

Many anticipated that the wave of protests that hit Arab countries would also reach Saudi Arabia. The royal family gave promises of expanding social rights in an attempt to diminish any potential displeasure among the population, and the regime also warned against participating in demonstrations and prepared the security services. The normally moderate foreign minister, Prince Saʿud al-Faysal, threatened in March 2011 that the regime would “cut off any finger” raised against the royal family.8 The religious establishment supported the regime, and issued fatwas that declared demonstrations to be forbidden according to Islamic law. One fatwa stated that since Saudi Arabia was an Islamic country “reform shall not take place through demonstrations and other methods that bring about unrest and divides the society.”9 There was no “Day of Rage” in Saudi Arabia. The royal family’s preventative measures probably had some effect, but there is also little reason to believe that most Saudis were ready to take to the streets. However, the government has not been able to prevent online mobilisation among Saudis. Earlier waves of political mobilisation in Saudi Arabia have been triggered by regional events. This was the case after the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, the Gulf war in 1990–91, and now, in the wake of the Arab Spring. The focus of political debate has, however, changed over the last decade; today internal conditions are the main focus. This change is illustrated, for instance, through the 7 Peer Reach, “4 ways Twitter can keep growing” (2013). Accessed February 26, 2014, http://blog .peerreach.com/2013/11/4-ways-how-twitter-can-keep-growing/. 8 “Saudi Arabia Will Cut off Any Finger Raised against It – Saudi fm,” Asharq al-Awsat, March 10, 2011. Accessed April 12, 2013, http://www.aawsat.net/2011/03/article55247240. 9 “A Fatwa from the Council of Senior Scholars in the Kingdom of Saudi-Arabia Warning Against Mass Demonstrations,” Islamopedia, October 3, 2013. Accessed October 19, 2013, http://islamopediaonline.org/fatwa/fatwa-council-senior-scholars-kingdom-saudi-arabiawarning-against-mass-demonstrations.

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decreasing interest concerning Saudi Arabia’s close “security policy” relationship with the usa. During the Gulf War (1990–91) more than 500,000 American soldiers were stationed in Saudi Arabia, which led to massive criticism of the royal family from different places. But when it was revealed in February 2013 that the Americans had used a military base in the country to carry out drone attacks against targets in Yemen,10 it did not cause a debate over the country’s relationship with the us. Today’s focus is instead on domestic issues in Saudi Arabia, and demands for citizens’ rights are increasingly characterising the public debate. There are several groups calling for civil and political rights, and, hence, working to change the established arrangement where citizens are granted social rights in return for allegiance; in other words, to transform Saudis from subjects to citizens.

Social Rights in Return for Allegiance

Citizenship is usually regulated by a country’s constitution. Yet Saudi Arabia does not have a constitution in the normal sense of the word. Instead it is Islamic law (Shariʿa) that functions as the kingdom’s constitution. However, there is the Basic Law of Governance (al-Nizam al-Asasi li-l-Hukm), which is the closest thing to a conventional constitution in Saudi Arabia. The Basic Law defines the citizen’s rights (huquq) and duties (wajibat).11 Citizen’s rights in Saudi Arabia are based on the Islamic principle of obedience and allegiance (bayʿa) to the ruler (wali al-amr). The Qurʾanic verse 4:59 says “O you who believe, obey God and obey the messenger and also those in charge among you.” This principle is literally rendered in the Basic Law, Article  9. According to ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s teachings, which form the dominant interpretation of Islam in Saudi Arabia, it is a duty to obey the ruler even if he is a despot, as long as he does not violate Islamic law. Article 6 of the Basic Law underlines that obedience to the ruler must be maintained at all times. It states: “Citizens shall give the pledge of allegiance (bayʿa) to the King, professing allegiance in times of hardship and of ease.” In return for their loyalty, the citizens are entitled to welfare services; in other words, social rights. Article 27 states that: “The State shall guarantee the rights of citizens and their families in cases of emergency, illness, disability, 10 “cia Using Saudi Base for Air Strikes,” Al Jazeera, February 7, 2013. Accessed October 19, 2013, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/02/201326145922846950.html. 11 “Basic Law of Governance,” Umm al-Qura Gazette, no. 3397, March 5, 1992. Accessed October 19, 2013, http://www.sagia.gov.sa/Documents/Laws/Basic%20Law%20of%20 Governance_En.pdf.

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and old age (…).” The state is also obliged to offer a wide range of different social welfare goods, including the provision of work for all citizens (Article 28), education (Article 30), and health services (Article 31). The pact of allegiance seen in the Basic Law is based on both Wahhabi Islam and clientelist traditions of the Arabian Peninsula. When King ʿAbd alʿAziz established the modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 he united the different tribes on the peninsula under one state. In this process, the tribal chiefs and other local authorities gave their obedience to the king in return for protection. This clientelist system was developed as a consequence of the individual’s need for protection in the absence of a centralised state. In pre-oil Saudi Arabia, the individual was not entitled to rights; the individual obtained rights as a part of a bigger group – the extended family or tribe. The tribal leaders played a key role in distributing welfare to their fellow tribesmen.12 Oil revenues, however, made the Al Saʿud capable of offering considerable welfare services directly to the individuals, and hence clearly upholding their side of the pact of loyalty, while at the same time undermining the standing of the tribal chiefs in the clientelistic structure. In 1938 the American company Chevron found oil beneath the Saudi desert sand, and during the Second World War production blossomed. However, it was not until the price jump following what in the West is known as “the Oil Crisis” in 1973–74 that oil income seriously began to fill the House of Saʿud’s coffers. Today, Saudi Arabia has almost one-fifth of the world’s proven oil reserves, and is the world’s largest producer and exporter of oil.13 Throughout the history of modern Saudi Arabia the regime has cultivated a narrative in which the ruler cares for and ensures his subjects’ material needs; thus the welfare arrangements are presented as gifts (makrama) rather than rights, while subjects are expected to obey their ruler and benefactor in return. While the Basic Law illustrates that Saudi citizenship goes a long way to guarantee social rights, civil and political rights hardly exist. Article 5b states that: “Rulers of the country shall be from amongst the sons of the founder King ʿAbd al-ʿAziz bin ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Faysal al-Saʿud, and their descendants.” In Saudi Arabia, the king is also prime minister. “Ordinary” citizens’ admission to the top political position is, in other words, out of the question, as this is reserved for the al-Saʿuds. In addition to the fact that only the direct descendants of the modern kingdom’s founder can govern the country, the citizens’ role in political­ decision making is very much restricted. Article 8 limits the people’s role in 12

13

Soraya Altorki, “The Concept and Practice of Citizenship in Saudi Arabia,” in Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East, ed. Suad Joseph (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 215–236. “Saudi Arabia: Country Analysis Brief Overview,” us Energy Information Administration. Accessed October 19, 2013, http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=sa.

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decision making to consultation, in accordance with the Islamic principle of shura, while Article 43 underlines that: “Councils held by the King and the Crown Prince shall be open for all citizens and anyone else who may have a complaint or a grievance. A citizen shall be entitled to address public authorities and discuss any matters of concern to him.” In regards to the citizen’s civil rights, the Basic Law states that: “The State shall protect human rights in accordance with the Shariʿa” (Article 26). The Basic Law does not mention women rights, freedom of religion, or freedom of assembly. This is hardly sensational in a state where political parties, unions, and demonstrations are forbidden, and civil society frowned upon.14 Freedom of expression is also very limited. Article 39 states: “It is prohibited to commit acts leading to disorder and division, affecting the security of the state and its public relations, or undermining human dignity and rights.” This system of loyalty in return for social rights is the “authoritarian bargain” – a term introduced by political scientists to describe how authoritarian regimes do not survive on repression alone. The so-called bargain is an implicit arrangement between the ruling elite and the citizens, whereby the latter relinquish political influence in exchange for public spending.15 As shown, in the case of Saudi Arabia, this arrangement is almost stated explicitly in the Basic Law. In the kingdom, welfare is used to buy the citizen’s allegiance, and in this way social rights arguably obstruct the development of civil and political rights. As Saudi citizens only possess social rights, they lack the opportunity to influence how these rights are distributed. Citizens are not equal – social rights are related to which class you belong to. For the royal family citizenship is a mechanism for including and excluding, one that is used to buy loyalty from selected groups, and to punish others. To put it somewhat simplistically, the royal family – the Al Saʿud – constitute an “executive class,” which is the most privileged. The “business class” is comprised of aristocratic families with close ties to the royal family, such as the Al Sudayri, the Al al-Shaykh, and the Al al-Tuwayjiri, which enjoys extensive 14 15

Abdulaziz H. al-Fahad, “Ornamental Constitutionalism: The Saudi Basic Law of Governance,” The Yale Journal of International Law 30 (2005): 375–396. Much has been written on the “authoritarian bargain”; see, for instance, Mehran Kamrava, Beyond the Arab Spring: The Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East (New York and London: Hurst, 2014); Agnieszka Paczynska, “The Discreet Appeal of Authoritarianism: Political Bargains and Stability of Liberal Authoritarian Regimes in the Middle East,” in Contentious Politics in the Middle East: Political Opposition under Authoritarianism, ed. Holger Albrecht (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2010), 34–51; and Raj M. Desai, Anders Olofsgård, and Tarik M. Yousef, “The Logic of Authoritarian Bargains,” Economics & Politics 21 (2009): 93–225.

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privileges. The “first class” is men professing to the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, while the “second class” consists of women and different minority groups. Minorities are given even fewer rights than other Saudi citizens as they are exposed to discrimination in different forms – based both in law and practice. Outside of this class system are around eight million foreign workers and the exclusion of these makes Saudi citizenship appear as a privilege.16

Demands for Civil and Political Rights

Even though the Saudis did not mass mobilise in the streets, the Arab Spring has undoubtedly fuelled the demands for civil and political rights in Saudi Arabia. Early in February 2011, just before Egypt’s former president, Hosni Mubarak, was forced to leave office, the Facebook group The people want to reform the regime (al-shaʿb yurid islah al-nizam) was founded. The group demanded the rule of law, efforts to combat corruption, and respect for human rights. Soon the group had thousands of followers. The same month the Islamic Umma Party (Hizb al-Umma al-Islamiyya) was also created, in spite of the ban against political parties. The party, which was a rare rapprochement among Islamists, seculars, and human rights activists, used social media to broadcast their demands for freedoms and human rights. At the same time, several petitions were put forward demanding a constitutional monarchy. The most important carried the title Towards a State of Rights and Institutions, which was drafted by a diverse group of people and got very broad support from Saudi society. The message of the petition was posted online by many of the drafters, including the prominent activists Tawfiq al-Sayf and Salman al-ʿAwda. The virtual opposition, despite being made up of different groups, expresses its unity in terms of the need for a new social contract, which implies that the relationship between the ruler and the citizen needs to change.17 Shiʿis One of the groups that are demanding rights as citizens are activists belonging to the Shiʿi minority. Wahhabi scholars emphasise strict monotheism (tawhid), and often refer to Shiʿi Islam as polytheism (shirk). These scholars are also 16

17

Mamoun Fandy, Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 30–31; Stig Stenslie, “Elite Integration and Stability in The House of Saud” (PhD diss., University of Oslo, 2009), 81–82. “The Islamic Umma Party,” Facebook, May 20, 2013. Accessed October 19, 2013, https:// www.facebook.com/islamicommaparty.

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critical of the fact that Shiʿis do not acknowledge the three first successors of the Prophet, and refer to them as “deniers/rejectionists” (rawafid). This minority is looked upon as divergent Muslims, or apostates, and a “fifth column” that fraternises with Saudi Arabia’s rival Iran.18 This brings about economic discrimination against the Shiʿis, who primarily live in the oil rich Eastern province. They are discriminated on the labour market, excluded from diplomatic positions and the state bureaucracy, and are also hindered from obtaining high positions in commerce.19 This marginalisation has contributed to a debate amongst the Shiʿis about their lack of rights in Saudi society, a debate that was taking place even before the Arab Spring. However, following the start of the Arab uprisings, the number of Shiʿis demanding citizen rights and equal citizenship (muwatana) is growing. The focus for this debate is anti-sectarianism and the need to incorporate this minority into Saudi society. SaudiShia, a Shiʿi organisation working for their rights, tweeted the following on April 24, 2013: “Real citizenship is morally & mentally accepting different people as they are all from one nation sharing the same fate.”20 Hasan al-Saffar, one of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent Shiʿi scholars, is in the frontline of demanding rights. He is part of a pragmatic and dialogue-oriented current called the “reformists” (al-islahiyyin). On his website he underlines the need for an elected National Assembly that reflects the will of the people: “Saudi Arabia’s population is looking forward to choosing their representatives to a National Assembly representing the will of the people.”21 Tawfiq al-Sayf, a reputable sociologist, is another leading activist for Shiʿi rights, one who links demands for rights to the concept of citizenship. In a post on Rasid.com, a moderate website established by Saudi Shiʿis, he presents arguments for a new social contract between ruler and citizen: “The social contract should be based on an equal relationship between the ruler and the ruled, where both parties’ rights and duties are grounded.”22 18

Natana J. Delong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 64. 19 Roel Meijer and Paul Aarts (eds), Saudi Arabia between Conservatism, Accommodation and Reform, Netherlands Institute of International Relations, “Clingendael” (2012). Accessed October 19, 2013, http://www.clingendael.nl/sites/default/files/20120000_research _report_rmeijer.pdf. 20 SaudiShia, Twitter, April 24, 2013. Accessed October 19, 2013, https://twitter.com/ SaudiShia/status/327007879913684993/. 21 Hassan al-Saffar, “Al-sheikh al-Saffar yadʿu ila majlis niyabi muntakhab fi-l-mamlaka” (Shaykh al-Saffar calls for an elected parliament in the Kingdom), 2012. Accessed October 19, 2013, www.saffar.org/?act=artc&id=3094. 22 Tawfiq al-Sayf, “ʿIlm ʿala bayan Naḥwa Dawlat al-Huquq wa-l-Muʾassasat” (Statement about the Pamphlet Towards the State with Rights and Institutions), 2012. Accessed 19

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Saudi Shiʿis demands for equal rights are in some cases supported by nonShiʿi activists; for example, Khalid al-Dakhil, a liberal academic and columnist, underlines that the Shiʿis are entitled to the same rights as other Saudi citizens: “The Shiʿis in sa [Saudi Arabia] are citizens just like everyone there, and should be taken as such.”23 Women Another group demanding rights is women. Women’s participation, both in public and in private, is limited in Saudi Arabia. They are dependent on permission from a male relative (mahram) to study, work, travel, and get married. Until recently they were excluded from participation in the Consultative Council (Majlis al-Shura) and did not have the right to vote in municipal elections, though these restrictions were abolished through a royal decree in September 2011. The Global Gender Report 2012, published by the World Economic Forum, places Saudi Arabia in 132nd place out of 135 countries, and the report particularly underlines the political and economic marginalisation of Saudi women.24 The marginalisation of women is the result of a combination of tribal customs, conservatism, and Wahhabi teachings. The position of women is influenced by the fact that the country is an Islamic state and by the religious scholars’ substantial authority in the social sphere. The royal house has traditionally limited women’s rights to prove Saudi Arabia’s Islamic credentials, and thus secure legitimacy from the people. Over the past decade this trend has partially been reversed and many are now looking to King Salman to reform women’s rights.25 However, the religious establishment is trying to curb this development, as they hold that women’s rights will weaken Islam’s position in Saudi society. This attitude was apparent when Wahhabi scholars took the unusual step of protesting in public against King ʿAbdallah’s decision to allow women into the Consultative Council.26 In the wake of the Arab Spring Saudi women have organised themselves, and are demanding an end to the discrimination they suffer. In Spring 2011 ­October, 2013, https://www.rasid.com/?act=artc&id=48359. [This url, www.rasid.com, was closed in 2014.] 23 Ahmed al-Omran, “Khaled Al-Dakhil Assistant Professor of Sociology,” 2007. Accessed October 19, 2013, http://saudijeans.org/2007/02/06/khaled-al-dakhil-assistant -professor-of-sociology/. 24 World Economic Forum, The Global Gender Gap Report 2012. Accessed October 19, 2013, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GenderGap_Report_2012.pdf, 304–305. 25 Female Saudi activists, interview with author, May 2009 and Autumn 2011. 26 “Saudi Clerics Protest against Appointing Women to Advisory Body,” Reuters, January 15, 2013. Accessed October 19, 2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/15/ us-saudi-clerics-women-idUSBRE90E0OO20130115.

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a group of Saudi women defied the ban against women driving, and posted pictures of their campaign on social media, including on Facebook and Twitter, and uploaded videos to YouTube. Their campaign received much attention, and the women attracted both support and anger. They based their right to drive on Article 8 of the Basic Law, which mandates consultation: “The State discrimination is based on gender so that men are granted the right to freedom of movement and even adolescents and children driving is tolerated while women are strictly prohibited. This is unjust. This is also not complying with the Basic Law of Governance of the country since, instead of basing it on consultation; the ban was issued on the basis of the views of a limited number of men with the exclusion of women.”27 The women are also actively working for reform in a wider sense. In a film posted on YouTube, under #Right2Dignity – one of the hashtags that the women’s movement is using – it is stated that “citizenship for Saudi women must entail a formal recognition from the state of women’s equal citizenship, with the same civil, political, social, and legal duties, and rights, that are given to male citizens.”28 Furthermore, women are demanding a legal framework that secures equal rights for both sexes. They underline the need for a codified family law that safeguards the interests of women in cases of divorce and custody proceedings. Women activists are also demanding political rights and have suggested the state “establish a quota system to ensure women representation on all levels of decision making, public sector, and governance to elevate women to equal citizens.”29 Manal al-Sharif, a famous woman activist, was arrested on May 22, 2011 after she uploaded a video to YouTube showing herself driving a car. She was accused of ruining Saudi Arabia’s reputation abroad and inflaming public opinion, but was pardoned by King ʿAbdallah. Al-Sharif herself argues that Saudi women should have the same rights as men, and states that the women’s movement will not give up until they have achieved this goal: “we will not accept being non-existent and having our demands marginalised.”30 Eman al-Nafjan, 27

Eman al-Nafjan, “Right-to-Dignity’s Statement on Lifting the Ban on Women Driving,” August 31, 2013. Accessed October 19, 2013, http://saudiwoman.me/2012/08/31/ right-to-dignitys-statement-on-lifting-the-ban-on-women-driving/#comments. 28 Citizenshipforwomen, “Citizenship for Saudi Women: English subtitles,” YouTube, March 7, 2011. October 19, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtkXTqXnCHc. 29 Ibid. 30 “Government under Pressure to Lift ban on Women Drivers,” Gulf States Newsletter, May 27, 2011.

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another woman activist, who is behind the blog Saudiwomen’s Weblog, argues for political reform; in one of her posts she demands “a constitutional democracy, after the Norwegian model.”31 Liberals It is not only “second class citizens” – Shiʿis and women – who have mobilised online. Wider sections of society have also embraced the concept of citizenship, and are demanding rights. Among those who are making such demands are the “liberals” (al-libraliyyun). Al-libraliyyun is a wide-ranging term that includes individuals and groups working to promote political participation and human rights – including women and minorities – and to weaken the religious establishment’s influence. The term also includes Islamists who are concerned about the lack of citizen rights in Saudi Arabia. While the liberal segment in the kingdom is often described as marginal, liberal activists have attracted a lot of attention, especially since 2011. And even though most liberals work for reform within the existing framework of the monarchy, they have been among the most vocal critics of the royal family. The liberals, who have been sending petitions to the king demanding reforms since 2003, did not march on the streets on the “Day of Rage.” Instead, they called for a constitutional monarchy through new petitions posted online. Khalid al-Dakhil, a liberal activist, states that the Arab Spring illustrated the need for changing the present relationship between the ruler and the citizen: “There is no longer any argument about whether this relationship should change. The argument now should be about how this change should occur.”32 He underlines that the regime needs to secure political reform because this “will support the political stability in the current phase that the region is passing through.”33 Moreover, many liberal Saudis opposed the economic hand-outs by the regime in 2011, which particularly benefited the religious establishment, and several liberals published their objections online. ʿAbd al-Rahim Allahim, a lawyer and commentator, tweeted: “A scholar is just a citizen, just like me. Why are 31

Eman al-Nafjan, “Karen-Elliott House’s on Saudi Arabia,” January 12, 2013. Accessed October 19, 2013, http://saudiwoman.me/2013/01/12/karen-elliott-houses-on-saudi-arabia/. 32 Khalid al-Dakhil, “What Awaits the Kingdom after the ‘Arab Spring’?” December 24, 2012. Accessed October 19, 2013, http://www.grc.net/index.php?frm_module=contents&frm_ action=detail_book&frm_type_id=&op_lang=en&override=Articles+%3E+What+Awaits +the+Kingdom+After+the+%E2%80%98Arab+Spring%E2%80%99%3F&sec=Contents &frm_title=&book_id=79840. 33 Ibid.

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he and his colleagues favoured when the basic concept of citizenship should ensure that he and I are equal before the law?”34 Muhammad al-Qahtani and ʿAbdallah al-Hamed are among the most wellknown rights activist in Saudi Arabia, and two of the founders of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (acpra). acpra was established without the government’s permission in 2009, and works to establish civil and political rights in Saudi Arabia. In a post on acpra’s webpage on June 22, 2012 it is underlined that the current relationship between the ruler and the citizen is no longer relevant: “Today, the people are in need of a new social contract, one between the reformed Saudi regime and a free people. This can only be done through a constitutional governance that draws its legitimacy from the people. The government must be elected, representative of the people’s will, and held accountable to them alone.”35 Several acpra members were arrested in the wake of the Arab Spring. In June 2012 al-Qahtani and al-Hamed were both brought to trial for establishing an “illegal organisation, threatening national unity, and breaking the pact of allegiance to the ruler.” Through the whole trial al-Qahtani tweeted details about it, and the case led to much criticism of the regime on social media. Furthermore, many activists, intellectuals, and academics followed the trials to demonstrate their support for al-Qahtani and al-Hamed. On March 9, 2013 al-Qahtani was sentenced to ten years in prison and al-Hamed to five years, in addition to six years from an earlier sentence, for which he had earlier been pardoned. Another acpra member, Omar al-Saʿid, was sentenced to four years in prison and 300 lashes in 2013 for calling for a constitutional monarchy and criticising the royal family for human rights offences. Liberals also run the risk of being accused of “insulting Islam” and referred to the General Court on charges of apostasy – a capital crime in Saudi Arabia. In June 2012, Raif Badawi, a young Saudi blogger who had set up the website Free Saudi Liberals, was arrested and brought to court on several charges, including that of apostasy. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, a fine of 1 million Saudi riyals, and 1,000 lashes.36 In January 2015, Badawi underwent the first 34 35

36

ʿAbd al-Rarahim Allahim, Twitter, 19 March, 2011. Accessed October 19, 2013, http://twitter .com/#!/allahim/status/49150972974473216. Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, “acpra Calls Upon Saudi Citizens to Demand Allegiance Conditions,” June 22, 2012. Accessed October 19, 2013, http://acprahr.org/news_ view_178.html. “Harsher Sentence for Held Saudi Activist,” Al Jazeera, September 2, 2014. Accessed January 14, 2015, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/09/harsher-sentence-held -saudi-activist-201492104874781.html.

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round of 50 lashes in public after Friday prayers in front of the al-Jafali mosque in Jedda, which triggered global outrage at Saudi Arabia.37 Salafis Like al-libraliyyun, the term al-salafiyyun encompasses a broad group of individuals, tendencies, and groups. In Saudi Arabia, Salafism, in the form of Wahhabism, is the strict state ideology. Likewise, the kingdom’s Sunni Islamists – who represent the most popular and best organised group of activists – are Salafis. The vast majority of these Islamists can be associated with the Islamic Awakening (al-sahwa al-islamiyya), which came about in the 1970s through a blend of the religious tenets of Salafism and the political discourse of the Muslim Brotherhood. While liberals acknowledge the concept of citizenship and want equal rights, Salafis tend towards a more exclusivist approach. Salafis often refer to the traditional Islamic protection system (dhimma); according to Islamic law, any Muslim who stays in dar al-islam is ipso facto a Muslim citizen. Christians and Jews, who belong to the “people of the book” (ahl al-kitab), are categorised as dhimmis, and do not have the same rights and duties as Muslim citizens. At the same time, the Salafis typically have a more transnational position based on the concept of the Islamic nation (umma). From this point of view, the nation-state (al-watan) is rejected, and replaced with the idea of an Islamic caliphate in which the concept of citizenship is irrelevant. Women’s rights should be based on the Shariʿa, which implies that women will not have the same rights as men. Salafis discard anything resembling the worship of saints, and some claim that Shiʿis and Sufis practice polytheism (shirk). Thus, strict Salafis do not regard them as Muslims, and consequently declare that they are not entitled to equal rights. However, there are signs that the Salafis’ traditional posture vis-à-vis citizenship is changing. In his ground-breaking research on Sahwa activism, Stéphane Lacroix identifies a sub-group that he dubs “Islamo-liberals,” because they merge the language of democracy with that of Islam.38 Several 37

38

“Saudi Activist Flogged Outside Mosque in Jeddah,” Al Arabiya, January 9, 2015. Accessed January 14, 2015, http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2015/01/09/Saudi-activist-flogged -outside-mosque-in-Jeddah.html. See among others, Stéphane Lacroix, Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 2011); and Stéphane Lacroix, “Saudi Islamist and the Arab Spring,” research paper, Kuwait Programme on Development, Governance, and Globalisation in the Gulf States. London School of Economics, 2014.

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“Islamo-liberals” have incorporated the idea of citizenship rights in their calls for a constitutional monarchy, and they have not hesitated to ally themselves with liberals and even Shiʿis to strengthen their case. Their ideals are moving towards a civil state rather than the utopian ideal of a caliphate, and they seem to have recognised the concept of individual rights. Salafis such as Salman alʿAwda, ʿAyidh al-Qarni, Yusuf al-Ahmad, and Muhammad al-Ahmari, are active in the debate for citizen rights. They are concerned about civil and political rights, and want political reform. Another example is Abdullah al-Maliki – a young Salafi scholar – who calls for civil and political rights in his book The Sovereignty of the Umma Comes before the Implementation of Shariʿa. In this book, he argues that civil and political rights should come before everything, even before the implication of Shariʿa. He also changes the common Islamic saying “Islam is the solution” to “Sovereignty of the people is the solution.”39 One might see the Salafis’ interest in citizenship rights as a result of their discovery of politics in general. In contrast to official clerics, who are apolitical, loyal to the regime, and reluctant to speak about sensitive issues, the Salafis have gained widespread popularity among ordinary Saudis for their political activism. They have also conquered social media, and have far more followers on Twitter than other reform activists. In 2012, Salman al-ʿAwda published the book Questions of the Revolution (Asʾilat al-Thawra), in which he argues for a more positive view of revolutions, which, according to Wahhabi teachings, are synonymous with chaos and danger. Thus, he challenges the principle of allegiance to the ruler and claims that there is a middle way between allegiance and violent insurgency: peaceful revolution. He rejects the idea of theocracy, the rule of Islamic jurists, and maintains that an Islamic state should be based on a contract between the state and its citizens. According to al-ʿAwda, democracy is a better governing model than autocracy, and he advocates representation of the people, freedom, and civil society.40 Not surprisingly, the book was banned, but al-ʿAwda used social media to share his message. In May 2013 he had over 2,800,000 followers on his Arabic language account, and he is especially appealing to the younger generation of Saudis. Interestingly, al-ʿAwda is also in favour of pluralism, and warns against sectarian conflict. On February 26, 2013 he tweeted: “The nation belongs to all its citizens. It is not in anyone’s interest to marginalise anyone else.”41 39 40 41

Stéphane Lacroix, “Saudi Islamist and the Arab Spring,” 8. Salman al-ʿAwda, Asʾilat al-Thawra (Questions of the Revolution), 2012. Accessed October 19, 2013, http://media.islamtoday.net/real/asela-thwra/asela-thwra.pdf. Salman al-ʿAwda, Twitter, February 26, 2013. Accessed October 19, 2013, https://twitter .com/Salman_Al_Odah/status/306358652216938496.

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Salafis associated with the Islamic Umma Party, unlawfully established in 2011, are also demanding political rights. The party consists of Islamists, secular academics, human rights activists, and lawyers, all of them eager to politically reform the kingdom. Not surprisingly, the party did not receive recognition from the regime, and therefore used social media as a platform for advocating its politics. Shaykh Mohammed bin Ghanim al-Qahtani, one of the founders of the party, issued a statement arguing “it is time to endorse political rights, including the right to elect a government, promote the role of women in society, and preserve women’s rights.”42

Al Saʿud’s Responses

Saudi Arabia’s authorities have tried to censor sensitive political views expressed in social media, but have realised that their attempts are inadequate because of the huge numbers of users. The number of Saudi users of Twitter, which was blocked in the country until 2008, has exploded. In February 2013, the minister for media and culture, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz Khoga, admitted that his ministry does not have the capacity to survey everything published on individual Twitter accounts, as it is just too much. The minister added that Saudi web users need to be more conscious, and called all users to help the authorities in censoring “unwanted” messages on social media.43 Regarding the demands for rights, Al Saʿud has responded by offering increased social rights, and hence enhancing their part of the authoritarian bargain. In February and March 2011 the regime handed out a gigantic welfare package, which included, among other items, 60,000 new positions in the Ministry of the Interior, the building of 500,000 new houses, and an increase of the minimum wage in the public sector. The religious establishment received a considerable slice of that cake. Many interpreted this as a sign of Al Saʿud’s gratitude for the fatwas underlining the need for allegiance to the king. This response hardly surprised anyone, and reflected the royal house’s handling of earlier waves of protests. However, it is interesting to notice that the regime is starting to adjust its rhetoric concerning social rights. While welfare goods 42

43

“Middle East Turmoil: Saudi Arabia Apart from the Rest?” Middle East Policy Council. Accessed April 12, 2014, http://www.mepc.org/articles-commentary/commentary/ middle-east-turmoil-saudi-arabia-apart-rest?print. “Twitter Beyond Ministry Control, Says Khoja,” Saudi Gazette, February 15, 2013, accessed 19 October, 2013, http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&con tentid=20130215153331.

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were previously presented as “gifts from the king,” they are now described as rights that the citizens are entitled to.44 The regime is trying to adjust to Saudis’ increasing conception of social welfare as rights they are entitled to as citizens. For instance, Saudi embassies no longer have an Office for Subjects (Qism Shuʾun al-Raʿaya), but an Office for Citizens (Qism Shuʾun al-Muwatinin), which is another indication that the regime has changed its rhetoric following the uprisings across the Arab world.45 The regime’s response to demands for civil rights has been ambivalent, and the status of freedom of speech is a good example of this. Al Saʿud has limited the right of freedom of speech through new laws,46 but at the same time room for critical debate has increased, particularly thanks to social media. There are fewer taboos, something which is, however, reflected only in practice, not law. The authorities are allowing criticism up to a point in order to give an illusion of freedom, and to let the people “blow off some steam.” However, to question the legitimacy of the royal family or the role of religion in society is still very much frowned upon, something that liberal activists in particular have experienced.47 As soon as Islam is “insulted,” domestic religious forces push for strict sanctions by the regime. It is interesting to note that Salafi activists have not been subject to similar reactions. Their books have been prohibited and their shows taken off air, but the regime has avoided tougher responses. It is plausible to assume that the Salafis’ standpoints are, in general, more accepted by Saudis – as a deeply conservative segment makes up a significant proportion of the population – and that suppressing them might bring about undesirable consequences for the regime’s legitimacy. From ancient Greece to today’s liberal democracies, political rights are viewed as the core of citizenship. The right to vote and to be elected defines the difference between a subject and a citizen. Political rights empower the citizen to directly influence the development of society, not least by impacting the country’s legislation.48 Al-Saʿud has passed several smaller – and partially symbolic – reforms, such as King ʿAbdallah’s decision to allow women to vote and be elected to the Consultative Council. However, the regime has not met 44 45 46

47 48

Saudi researcher, interview with author, May 3, 2013. Saudi blogger, interview with author, May 23, 2013. “Political and Social Developments,” Gulf States Newsletter, January 17, 2011; and Human Rights Watch, World Report 2012: Saudi Arabia, 2012. Accessed October 19, 2013, from http://www.hrw.org/world-report-2012/world-report-2012-saudi-arabia. Saudi researcher, interview with author, May 7, 2013. Thomas Humphrey Marshall, “Reflections on Power,” Sociology 3 (1969): 141–155.

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demands for more substantial political reforms. Members of the royal family often claim that they are in favour of political reforms, but add that the people are not ready yet. In the words of a Saudi prince, “political reforms are a good idea in theory. But the Saudi population is not ready for such rights. You need to educate the people in democratic understanding first, this will take decades. Many of us in the family want more democratic governance – but the people are not ready.”49 Conclusion Saudi Arabian citizenship guarantees social rights in return for allegiance to the king, a social contract with little room for civil and political rights. Saudis are increasingly challenging this contract. During the 2000s, the focus on citizenship and citizens’ rights increased, while the Arab Spring also inspired wider segments of Saudi society to articulate demands for civil and political rights, on the basis of being citizens. At the same time, social media makes it possible for more Saudis to call for such rights. Many Saudis perceive the regime’s welfare package as an insult to their dignity as citizens as well as undermining their legitimate demands for civil and political rights. The development of a virtual opposition and the mobilisation of citizen rights are challenging the royal family’s traditional strategy of cooptation. This mobilisation in recent years – and especially in the wake of the Arab Spring – challenges the regime, and unveils the limitations of the rentier state. The old social contract depends on people not believing in civil and political rights. This is no longer the case in Saudi Arabia. However, as we have seen, in Saudi Arabia the demands for rights are not coming from one movement, but from a variety of individuals and groups. In contrast to, for instance, Egypt and Tunisia at the outbreak of the Arab Spring, there is no united movement confronting the Al Saʿud. The rapprochement between liberals, Shiʿis, and Islamists during the spring of 2011 was short-lived due to fundamental disagreements on social issues. Furthermore, the activism is primarily online; as long as Saudis are not taking to the streets their power to influence is limited, and as long as the opposition is divided along sectarian, regional, and ideological lines it is likely that the royal house will continue to try to co-opt and repress the opposition rather than grant civil and political rights. 49

Saudi royal, interview with author, May 12, 2013.

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chapter 8

Migration and the Marginality of Citizenship in the Arab Gulf Region: Human Security and High Modernist Tendencies James Sater1 Introduction In the Arab Gulf region, lopsided population growth and the role of global labour markets have rendered citizenship questions and migration key concerns for practitioners and scholars alike.2 Migrants have made up 70 percent of the population of Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (uae) since the 1970s, and have reached levels above 85 and 90 percent in the early 2010s. Counting the number of migrants, Saudi Arabia (9.1 million) and uae (7.8 million) are now on the 4th and 5th place of global migration movements in spite of their relatively small national populations.3 The large majority of these migrants enjoy none of the rights associated with citizenship. Discussing the Gulf’s long-term residential and citizenship policies, the uae political commentator Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi recently suggested introducing a naturalisation law. Based on socio-economic criteria such as wealth, education, professional status, and length of residency, he suggested allowing a very small number of expatriates not exceeding a couple of hundred per year to obtain uae nationality.4 His suggestion was met with harsh resistance in uae social media, stirring up considerable controversy in the country. It lead to 1 The author wishes to thank Rania Maktabi, Kevin Gray, as well as the editors for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. 2 James Sater, “Citizenship and Migration in the Gulf,” Citizenship Studies 18 (2014): 292–302; Andrew M. Gardner, “Gulf Migration and the Family,” Journal of Arabian Studies 1 (2011): 1; Anh Nga Longva, Walls Built on Sand. Migration, Exclusion and Society in Kuwait (Boulder, Co: Westview, 1999). 3 The global ranking is led by the highly populated states of the United States, the Russian Federation and Germany, whilst the United Kingdom and France are on 6th and 7th place respectively. un-desa and oecd, 2013. World Migration in Figures, 2, accessible at http:// www.oecd.org/els/mig/World-Migration-in-Figures.pdf. 4 Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, “Give Expats an Opportunity to Earn uae Citizenship,” Gulf News, September 22, 2013, accessible at www.gulfnews.com.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_010

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an Arabic twitter hashtag translated as “this writer does not represent me” with some writers indicating that such a proposal would be the first step towards importing not just people, but also their troublesome political problems and aspirations.5 While this proposal was unlikely to have any real policy implications, the fact that a relatively modest suggestion unleashed so much public resistance is indicative of a tense relationship between national and migrant populations in the Gulf region and a profound malaise about its future. Given the above mentioned numbers and the debates that these have unleashed, this paper aims to contribute to an understanding of the mechanisms that produce the marginalised status of migrants in the Gulf. This chapter argues that, in spite of numerous reports documenting the condition of migrants and their vulnerability in Arab Gulf countries, the status of marginalisation is likely to continue in the foreseeable future. Indeed, according to the consensus among international experts meeting in Chatham House in May 2012 on the issue of granting of citizenship rights to migrants, such prospects are close to non-existent even if there was an increased push emanating from international organisations and international law.6 Given that naturalising migrants and granting nationality remains a reserved right of sovereign states, it appears that any such change can only emanate from within, not from outside of the sovereign state.7

Theoretical Framework

The legal and substantive exclusion of populations from full membership in the state and thereby from the rights of citizenship remains one of the most central questions in citizenship studies. Throughout the existence of nation states, gender, class, ethnic and racial categories have been used to domestically exclude substantial groups of society from full legal and substantive membership. Increasingly challenged by liberal-democratic thought and judicial institutions, many of these legal restrictions have in the meantime disappeared. Similarly, concerning migrant labour many of the industrialised welfare states of Western Europe originally developed differential exclusion 5 Albawaba Business, October 12, 2013. Accessible at www.albawaba.com. 6 “Future Trends in the gcc – Workshop Summary,” 13, http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/ files/chathamhouse/public/Research/Middle%20East/0512gcc_summarytwo.pdf. 7 Echoing Hannah Arendt’s famous dictum that “sovereignty is nowhere more absolute than in matters of emigration, naturalisation, nationality, and expulsion,” Joppke emphasises this point very convincingly. See Christian Joppke, “Why Liberal States Accept Unwanted Immigration,” World Politics 50 (1998): 267.

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and, hence, marginalisation as the prevalent model towards migrant labour until the mid-20th century. Differential exclusion meant to accept migrants within strict temporal and functional limits, primarily as “guests”, “workers”, and “individuals”, i.e. is not as long term residents, settlers, or families.8 This model was later substituted with assimilationism and multi-culturalism as two competing migration paradigms and policies, as also here the legal, domestic exclusion was increasingly challenged by liberal jurisdiction and courts.9 In the oil-rich states of the Gulf, differential exclusion remains prevalent. This is hardly surprising given the fairly recent introduction of large-scale migrant labour as well as the fragility of national identities and borders – factors that also played an important role in migration and naturalisation policies in Western Europe.10 Yet, there are other important, less temporal factors such as the significance of rentierism in state-society relations, the authoritarian nature of the state and the marginal status of Gulf citizens themselves, and, concomitantly, the extreme imbalance between national and migrant populations. As a consequence, migrants’ differential exclusion and their marginalisation has become a question of human security, a concept that has recently become a focal point for analysis of global labour, citizenship, and statelessness in the Middle East and elsewhere. In this chapter, human security is used as a broad concept in order to emphasise the vulnerabilities of migrants in host countries, and the security related implications. This is used differently from what has commonly been termed the securitisation of migration in the eu context,11 as it comprises the following three dimension: the security of individuals (as opposed to the security of groups); the interrelationship of freedom from threats of war with the freedom from physical and material insecurities; rule-governed security (as opposed to war-governed security) that is dependent on structures by law not only in international relations, but also in the domestic sphere.12 8 9 10

11

12

Stephen Castles and Alastair Davidson, Citizenship and Migration: Globalisation and the Politics of Belonging (New York, Routledge, 211), 60–61. Christian Joppke, “Why liberal States,” 266–293. Christian Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration (Cambridge: Polity Press 2010), 51; P. Weil, “Access to Citizenship,” in Citizenship Today, ed. A. Aleinikoff and D. Klusmeyer (Washington d.c., Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001): 17–35. Peter Seeberg and Zaid Eyadat (eds), Migration, Security, and Citizenship in the Middle East (New York, Palgrave, 2013); Brad K. Blitz and Maureen Lynch, “Statelessness and Deprivation,” in Statelessness and Citizenship: A Comparative Study on the Benefits of Nationality, ed. Brad K Blitz and Maureen Lynch (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011), 1–22; Judy Fudge, “Making Claims for Migrant Labour,” Citizenship Studies 18 (2014): 29–45. See Mary Kaldor, “Human Security,” Society and Economy 33 (2011): 445–446.

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Consequently, in this chapter I will develop the following three factors that relate to the domestic dimension of migration and the marginality of migrants’ membership. First, the foundation of Gulf political communities has been based on the marginalisation of migrant communities, which has been particularly important due to social and political hierarchies, and ultimately graded citizenship among Gulf nationals themselves. Second, the rentier state’s relative autonomy from societal pressure has allowed Gulf states to pursue what James Scott calls high-modernist ideologies. This means that judicial control mechanisms play no significant role in the policy making process, which inter alia further compounds migrants’ differential exclusion and marginalised status. Third, any potential reforms of naturalisation policies, for example along the lines that Ayelet Shachar develops in her usage of jus nexi in advanced industrial states,13 ultimately fail to overcome the technocratic and high-­ modernist views pursued by states, and may even further endanger the human security of Gulf migrants and their descendants. Citizenship, Political Communities, and Differential Exclusion The first part of this chapter analyses the role played by migration in the construction of political communities in the Gulf. The exclusionary aspect of citizenship has been very well documented in the literature, as identities and corresponding ideas of the political have often been constructed through prisms of exclusion of non-members based on gender, racial, linguistic, cultural, religious, or other distinctions.14 Based on such distinctions, Carl Schmitt developed the most powerful category of the political based on both the sovereignty of, and membership in the nation-state. Here, citizens as members in political communities identify as “friends” that could in extremis be faced with “enemies”– in the so-called Schmittian Ernstfall.15 While such a friend/enemy distinction may ultimately be critically viewed through Schmitt’s historical sympathies for fascism, from a constructivist point of view it is quite useful to consider his distinction as an important historical example of what the nation as an “imagined” community entails.16 In practice, this means that the 13 14 15 16

Ayelet Shachar, The Birthright Lottery (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2009); James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998). Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1963, 3rd edition), cited in Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration, 2. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).

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granting of formal citizenship and nationality as naturalisation continues to be seen as a privilege of sovereign states often by administrative order. Joppke uses the analogy of “externally exclusive edges” of citizenship that have, from its inception, been “hard” in order to restrict the privileges associated with citizenship, including welfare provisions, to members of the national community that increasingly became universalistic and inclusive.17 In spite of Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (udhr) that guarantees “the right to a nationality,” this right is unlikely to be operationalised anytime soon. Nationality can be withdrawn according to the laws of many countries, although often only if the action will not render the individual stateless. Nevertheless, conflicts between this right and national law regularly occur after divorce or as political reprisals.18 In the second part of this chapter, I will use James Scott’s concept of highmodernism as a tool for understanding social, cultural, and economic consequences of the extra-ordinary high levels of migration. While Scott focuses primarily on large development schemes in urbanism, agriculture and water management, his main contention is that state planners neglect local knowledge when implementing development plans, arguing that the consequences are particularly disastrous if state decision makers are unchecked by an independent judiciary, parliamentary oversight, and liberal-democratic principles.19 As I will contend in this chapter, in the Gulf this can be adopted and called a rentier high-modernist dilemma that can be summarised with the following two assertions: (1) the more developed the state capacity is to pursue development schemes, the larger the need for liberal democratic checks on these capacities; (2) in rentier states, the more successful development schemes become, the further the autonomy of the state from the populace, hence creating even fewer checks on the state. The consequence of this, if demonstrated, assertion is that local populations are quite alienated from the domestic development plans, framed in a sense of cultural insecurity, yet in a rentier state are unable to assert their autonomy and demands. In addition, driven by economic rentierism, states have difficulties to assert their primary role as protectors of their populations, and are caught in between their developmental priorities and the alienation of their population base. In turn, in a situation of extra-ordinary high levels of migration, the societal response based on a perception of threat compounds policies of differential exclusion.

17 Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration, 31. 18 Blitz and Lynch, “Statelessness and Deprivation,” 5–10. 19 Scott, Seeing Like a State, 4–6.

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Last, with a view to future reforms of the differential exclusion model, I will further analyse existing naturalisation models and compare the potential of these to overcome the societal challenges of the rentier-high modernist dilemma. In a critique of existing citizenship laws, the Canadian scholar Ayelet Shachar argues that national citizenship laws should recognise genuine connections to the host country and population, and add a third type of citizenship law, jus nexi, to the two conventional nationality criteria: jus sanguinis and jus soli. Primarily focusing her analysis of genuine connection on liberaldemocratic states in which social and political inclusion is possible through a variety of means, she argues that the legal construct of property right and genuine connection can also be applied to naturalisation laws. This is because through public education, taxation, language acquisition including accents and, potentially, class consciousness, genuine connection with a host country is produced and reproduced, providing a right of jus nexi. In her view, citizenship “must account for more than the mere automatic transmission of entitlement.”20 Yet, as a right it should also be subject to change if such connection ceases to exist after generations of non-connection, such as residency abroad. Using this normative tool and political proposition, I will finally argue that the local specificities of jus nexi in the Gulf have a tendency to reinforce, rather than alleviate, existing exclusions. Theoretical constructs

Construction of political communities

Rentier high-­ modernist dilemma

Naturalisation and jus nexi

Empirical Investigation

Identification of friends/enemies in imagination of national communities

Impact of ­developmentalism on local citizenship

The future of citizenship laws in Gulf rentier states



Foundation of Gulf political communities

Analysing the different aspects of citizenship reveals a number of particularities in the Gulf. First, following Marshall’s distinction between three types of 20 Shachar, The Birthright Lottery, 164–165.

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citizenship rights, civil, political, and social, citizens in the Gulf enjoy only some civil rights, few if any political rights, yet quite extensive social rights. In fact, there appears a profound imbalance between welfare rights on one hand, and civil and political rights on the other. In addition, the states with the highest percentage of migrants, Kuwait, uae, and Qatar, state sponsored welfare provisions to citizens also appear the most generous, whilst migrants’ access to nationality by means of naturalisation the weakest. Yet, in addition to gender as the most basic category that has given rise to partial exclusion amongst nationals, there are numerous population groups identified by alleged origin, religion, or language that enjoy fewer civil and social rights than other citizens of the state. Kuwait and the uae have significant percentages of Ajamis and bidun (stateless nationals). Shiʿis and other sectarian groups form minorities that face social, economic, and political marginalisation especially in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. In addition, tribal affiliations can determine individuals’ civil and social rights tremendously, and is often officialised in passports. Recently naturalised citizens, whilst few in numbers, may not have a family book that is necessary for some administrative procedures and advantages, thereby providing another source of partial exclusion of the rights of citizenship.21 This fact illustrates a basic observation about migrants’ citizenship status: a demarcation line between citizens and migrants is not quite as clear as it may appear on first sight. Instead, the rentier pact between states and citizens rests on the provision of quite generous welfare rights, in exchange for reduced civil and political rights. The distribution of rents from oil income accrued from abroad remains a foundation of this, yet what has become equally important feature is the rent that is generated from the surplus value produced by migrant workers inside the Gulf states. Rents and the Production of Surplus Value The limitations that Gulf migrants face with regards to civil rights associated with citizenship are numerous. First, the right to business ownership is limited as it requires a national sponsor, who is required to hold 51 percent equity in whatever company is founded. Second, the right to hire employees is ­regulated through the sponsorship system, kafala, a traditional way of guaranteeing and vouching for “guests.” This means that only nationals can sponsor foreign workers. As the right to abode is generally linked to employment, residency is always limited to sponsorship by a national. Third, non-nationals are not allowed to 21

Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, “The Book that Proves Some Emiratis Are More Equal than Others,” The National, February 7, 2010.

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own real estate except in specially designed areas. As a result, property markets generate a substantial amount of rents that becomes part of a redistribution system from foreign, private enterprise to the indigenous population. This means that the lack of civil rights of a surplus generating, private sector migrant community directly leads to a transfer of wealth from migrants to nationals. While data about the extent of this transfer is not available, a clue can be taken from examining Gross Domestic Product per capita (gdp) and compare this with the gdp per person employed, the difference partially being surplus value generated and transferred to sponsors as rents. According to World Bank data, the uae where the issue of differential exclusion is among the most important, has experienced a large fluctuation in gdp per capita growth (that includes all resident workers and salaried professionals), yet gdp per capita is constantly twice as large as gdp per person employed. While some of this can easily be attributed to oil income, the percentage of oil rents does never exceed 25 percent (the maximum in 2008 when oil prices reached levels above US$150 per barrel), and remains otherwise at under 20 percent of gdp. The variations in gdp per capita can also more directly be linked to the variations of gdp per person employed, and not to the oil price variations experienced over the last 15 years (www.worldbank.org). Table 1

Year

gdp per capita in uae compared (1999–2012)

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

gdp per person 22612 24019 23204 21881 23877 23929 22928 employed gdp per capita 43370 45969 45038 44819 46661 47081 43533 Oil rents (% of gdp) 11 18 14 13 15 18 22

Year

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

gdp per person 21402 19420 17678 14924 13874 14113 14244 employed gdp per capita 40689 35309 31070 25933 24099 23907 24262 Oil rents (% of gdp) 23 21 25 15 19 23 21 Source: http://data.worldbank.org/country/united-arab-emirates

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Membership in Political Communities The extension of citizenship rights to migrants, both in the form of naturalisation and as an extension of civil, political, and social rights has been strongly contested in the Gulf. First, this is due to extensive welfare provisions that exist for those included. The existence of welfare rights generally raises questions about “the right to have rights,” i.e. based on which set of ethical standards should welfare rights be extended to non-members who have not previously participated in the building of the welfare state, with whom solidarity is more abstract, and trust may be more questionable.22 This question is all the more acute in rentier states, where public revenues are not based on contributions through salaried labour and tax: The public cake to share is, indeed, limited and almost entirely dependent on the exportation of oil and gas resources, and not dependent on tax revenue to which migrants might contribute. Surplus value produced through migrant labour takes the form of private rents (sovereign wealth funds and public works excluded). Second, in the Gulf there exist a significant number of groups residing on the national territory without being nationals of other countries, i.e. the phenomenon of statelessness. Consequently, if citizenship rights are to be granted, then those with a higher level of claims are those issued from the land but whose citizenship status was not formalised due to economic, sectarian, tribal, or other administrative considerations.23 Third, gender, sectarianism, and tribal identity all serve to distinguish between different social and political communities that are only loosely connected as one community with equal rights, diminishing the universal understanding of citizenship.24 This means that citizenship hierarchies as degrees of membership enjoy a significant amount of social recognition across the Gulf, and have been strongly compounded in political discourse and institutions. Even modest reforms such as those advocated by Al-Qassemi echo such recognition and reproduce them. Fourth, Gulf citizenship has a distinctive economic dimension due to rentierism. The primary role of the state is that of provider and distributor of rents to nationals, or as that of facilitating of activities that allow access to rents. In this context, migration has been a core rent-distributing activity. The state provides economic incentives, infrastructure, and a system where foreign, especially Arab and Indian investors can set up businesses with a national partner who is legally required to have a majority of 51 percent equity share. Due to the increasing amount of value-added created through lowskilled service and construction sectors, transfers have skyrocketed, further 22 Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration, 73–109. 23 See Claire Beaugrand’s contribution in this collection, Chapter 18. 24 Partrick, Nationalism in the Gulf States, 20–22.

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constituting important circuits of rent that strengthen economic citizenship in rentier states. This is especially among close allies to the regimes and their clients in the private sector, largely limiting the private sector’s political role in the state.25 A comparison of membership in political communities in the Gulf based on rentierism with a model of membership based on nationalism, reveals further idiosyncrasies. While the establishment of political communities in nationstates has been associated with external enemies that may pose existential threats, Gulf citizenship has been established and increasingly consolidated in the face of migrant communities that pose not easily defined security threats (external enemies), but rather larger cultural and societal challenges to the national populations. Based on these perceived threats, a process of empowering national populations has been a crucial component of collectively identifying as a group.26 In her analysis of Kuwait, Longva develops the Schmittian friend/enemy categories of the political to the domestic categories of empowerment/disempowerment. Coining the term a “besieged” society, she refers to the extensive use of female migrant domestic workers inside families that has fundamentally altered the privacy and, to some extent, isolation of domestic family dynamics. The relevance of this becomes entirely clear when considering that 90 percent of Kuwaiti households employ often three to four female domestic workers. Female domestic workers alone number about 500,000 in Kuwait, compared to a native population of slightly over one million towards the end of the 2000s.27 The term “besieged empowerment” aims to capture the combination of economic and, in some cases, physical power that Gulf nationals have over migrant domestic workers, ironically highlighting Gulf nationals’ sense of vulnerability due to the omnipresence of foreign workers in all aspects of social life. While this certainly applies to domestic workers given the amount of knowledge migrant workers are able to accumulate about private family homes, the larger dichotomy of besiegement versus domination also informs more political and economic approaches to citizenship rights and migrants, epitomized in the privatisation of the right to residency through the kafala system of visa. Interestingly, given the complexity of foreign c­ ommunities with 25 26 27

Sater, “Citizenship and Migration”; Steffen Hertog, “State and Private Sector in the gcc after the Arab Uprising,” Journal of Arabian Studies 3 (2014): 174–195. Partrick, speaks of “inward-facing nationalism,” in Nationalism in the Gulf States, 28. Ahmad Attiy, Migrant Workers in Kuwait: The Role of State Institutions (Middle East Viewpoint Series. The Middle East Institute, February 2, 2010), accessible at http://www.mei .edu/content/migrant-workers-kuwait-role-state-institutions#edn2.

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different, economically and partially ethnically constructed citizenship status that live in the Gulf, from wealthy Iranian business communities, to Western professionals, to Russian, central Asian, Indian, and Arab service sector employees, to Sri Lankan domestic and Pakistani construction site workers, what can be called a citizenship hierarchy extends well beyond the simple national/ expat dichotomy. The hierarchy is composed of a myriad of power relationships that depend on gender, ethnic origin, religion, and nationality. Yet, given the unequal population growth rates, a structural factor underlying the citizenship debate remains that a very large number of migrants are perceived to be a threat to national homogeneity and authenticity – even if in nationalist rhetoric this is mainly targeted at low-skilled migrants from the Indian Subcontinent. As the uae labour minister clarified with regards to gcc policies, the gcc ministers “have agreed that Asian workers are contracted workers, not what some call immigrant workers….” The prevailing approach is based on the notion of besieged empowerment when he argues that “we want to protect the minority – which is us.”28 As I argued elsewhere, this language promotes restrictions on migrant rights and instils fear in the public sphere that has the effect of legitimising the role of the state as that of the protector of national populations.29 The security paradigm adopted by the state is in contradistinction to the security of individual migrants, as it focuses on collectivity. However the restrictive migrant laws do more than just allow for the production of added value, and legitimate government and its response to a perceived threat. As Herb points out, especially in the uae there has been strong opposition not just to the state but also to its developmentist/migration policies which had led to negative cultural consequences in the eyes not only of intellectuals but also powerful public figures.30 This has been compounded by the private sector’s perceived lack of functionality among many Gulf nationals, which employs few Gulf nationals nor pays substantial taxes to Gulf governments.31 Hence, it would be misleading to argue that restrictions on migrant’s rights serve to legitimate the role of the state alone; rather it responds to domestic fears and criticism of the 28

29 30 31

Cited Gwenn Okruhlik, “Dependence, Disdain, and Distance: State, Labor, and Citizenship in the Arab Gulf States,” in Industrialisation in the Gulf: A Socioeconomic Revolution, ed. J.F. Seznec and M. Kirk (London: Routledge, 2011), 125–142, especially 133, emphasis added. Sater, “Citizenship and Migration in the Gulf.” Dhahi Khalfan Al-Tamim Head of Dubai Police, Abdel-Khaleq Abdulla, Political Science Professor at uae University, Al Ain. See Partrick, “Nationalism in the Gulf States,” 30. Hertog, “State and Private Sector in the gcc,” 174–195.

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state’s bold developmentist and migration policies. After all, demands for participation from Gulf intellectuals have often been phrased with reference to the negative aspects of migration for local authenticity and long-term survival as a community. As Herb notes with regards to opposition to the state: Citizens [in the Gulf] lack power, and their interests are not reflected in government policies that pursue diversification at the cost of overwhelming levels of immigration, cultural change, and a loss of identity.32 Consequently, the marginality of migrants reflects the marginal status of Gulf citizens themselves, and the language of state officials is not simply used to legitimise its “protective” role. Instead, it replicates social concerns that have been used by domestic critics that created a very particular public sphere based on the notion being “besieged”. Yet the feeling of a loss of authenticity, so important in contemporary Gulf society, increases the collective identity as a marginalised political community (with some notable differences between countries, such as in Kuwait), prompting policy responses from the political elites with respect to migrants. Consequently, if privileges and citizenship rights are usually defined liberally as protection from the state, and more Schmittian as protection from external people and states, then both aspects have been reversed in the Gulf. Membership in Gulf political communities has a domestic, migration-based focus: to enjoy protection from migrant populations that the state to varying degrees is called upon to guarantee. Consequently, the existence of large migrant communities have been instrumental in the creation Gulf political communities as it gave meaning to citizenship rights of domestic communities. Hardening of Citizenship Rights and Rule-governed Insecurity It follows from the previous argument that the marginalisation of migrant labour in the form of unequal distribution of citizenship rights is a core aspect of the rentier model of citizenship or the specific Gulf state citizenship regime.33 This applies in particular to more diversified economies such as Dubai, and those that are moving in similar directions such as Qatar and Abu Dhabi. From the sponsorship of foreign business and labour, to renewable visa policies,

32

33

Michael Herb, “A Nation of Bureaucrats: Political Participation and Economic Diversification in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41 (2009): 390. See “Introduction,” 6; for the definition see, 67.

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and some of the control mechanisms such as non-objection letters for job seekers,34 administrative controls with regards to migrants are strongly embedded in rentierism. Yet, the implications of this rentier model of citizenship transgress the national community. Migrants are frequently members of upper strata where material wealth is accrued and control over labour exercised on behalf of national (co-)owners, making for example Iranian and Indian entrepreneurs a core constituency of Dubai. Tough policing, low crime rates, liberal economic policies as well as fast administrative decision making due to extensive use of electronic administrative procedures are particularly attractive for those who emphasise efficiency and liberal-economic policies.35 This interior hardening of citizenship rights has been compounded by a strong set of segregation rules from the work place over sport clubs and public education to residential areas – the most visible aspect is the construction of “bachelor cities” for the large pool of male, low skilled labourers from the Indian subcontinent that constitute a large majority of all migrants.36 This “hardening” of the inner meaning of citizenship rights is directly related to the lack of meaningful control mechanisms that, especially the Emirate of Dubai, secured in the late 1970s. It was then when a constitutional reform project aimed at limiting the policymaking freedom of the ruling families by federalising oil income and economic policies was rejected by Dubai, which preferred to keep its autonomy in pursuing its economic policies. As a result, free from constitutional constraints, the Dubai government was able to promote construction and real estate transactions with the help of an unprecedented influx of foreign labour, thereby strengthening the rentier pact b­ etween state, the private sector, and society. It could do so notwithstanding the criticisms that started to become frequently expressed. In short, the Emirate of Dubai acquired unprecedented autonomy from society, in marked contrast to Kuwait. Here, similar oil revenues and rentier bargains exist, yet construction, real estate, business, and tourism sectors are remarkably less diversified yet the city’s commercial elite politically a lot more powerful.37 34

35

36 37

This is a required document issued by an employer certifying that the authorised to seek other job opportunities. This is usually issued after a certain number of years employed, and is aimed to protect the employer’s economic interest with regards to migrant labour. N. Vora, “Business Elites, Unofficial Citizenship, and Privatized Governance in Dubai” (Viewpoints: Migration in the Gulf. Washington dc, The Middle East Institute, 2010), 46–48. Andrew M. Gardner, “Gulf Migration and the Family,” Journal of Arabian Studies 1 (2011): 3–25. Herb, “A Nation of Bureaucrats,” 389–390.

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However, the outer shell of migration remains remarkably soft. Whereas it has become virtually impossible for most passport holders to arrive legally in most advanced liberal democracies in Western Europe, re-inventing the term Fortress Europe, it is comparatively easy to find a job and obtain residency in the Gulf states, as these states continue to actively recruit a significant amount of foreign labour. These states have attempted to implement a policy of contractual labour, and circular migration, as Western Europe (in particular West Germany) did in the 1950s and 1960s with guest worker programs. However, in contrast to Western Europe where this concept became increasingly obsolete since the late 1970s due to judicial interference, in the Gulf this remains by and large possible leading to rule-governed insecurity among migrants: the fluidity of citizenship rights as mentioned above is compounded by a lack of effective judicial control mechanisms based on principles of rule of law that mark statesociety relations in the Gulf.38

Human Security as High Modernist Dilemma

It is argued here that gulf migration policies largely reflect a high-modernist dilemma, which has as one of its consequences the marginalisation of migrants. From labour conditions in the outdoors construction sector, to the “coordinated deception” of migrant workers upon arrival, demands for guaranteed residency, fair juridical treatment, integrated and respectful neighbourhoods, health care, education, all this is far removed from genuine political concern.39 Given the extreme population dynamic, this is hardly surprising. Even more, the kafala system of visas has become part of a power dynamic in which the male kafeel becomes the owner of added-value obtained from the workforce. This has created substantial vested interests in the status quo. Limitations that governments try to implement in terms of the number of workers sponsored by one kafeel or percentage of foreign workers in private companies are therefore undermined: employing unregistered labourers, as well as using 38

39

Some tentative reforms and potential exceptions occurred when judicial and parliamentary oversight was more developed, notably in Bahrain and Kuwait. See Nathan J. Brown, The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Gulf (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1997). Some changes proposed by enigmatic figures including the Bahraini minister of labour are certainly worth pointing out, tentative reforms aiming at easing the kafeel system and restrictions on foreign workers, as well as an increasing number of scholarly contributions to this problematic. See for example Qassimi, “The Sponsorship System is on the Wrong Side of History,” The National, October 17, 2010, accessible at www.thenational.ae.

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fictional Gulf nationals as employees against a registration fee, are current practices that undermine governments’ attempts at nationalising the private sector workforce. Given the rentier pact and the privileged position that powerful individuals and families obtained in this hierarchical wealth-creation system, enforcement is difficult to sustain. In fact, it has created a black-market of “industrial-scale rent seeking by nominal sponsors (national businesses or individuals) who act as informal ‘brokers’ for foreign labour, either selling it to other employers or extracting payment from workers in return for releasing them onto a large market for informal, self-employed labour.”40 Furthermore, private sector interests favour low wage labour as well as authority over foreign workers through visa sponsorship, making labour more subservient easily exploitable. Consequently, state policies that aim at nationalising the private sector workforce, as nationals have little actual control over management and other economic processes, have so far been unsuccessful. In spite of numerous government initiatives and rhetoric, private sector employment among Gulf nationals remains under 20 percent in the case of Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Bahrain, and 2–5 percent in the case of Kuwait, uae, and Qatar.41 However, the existence of such private sector interests especially in informal labour does not mean that states have no ability to enforce rules. Yet when rules on foreign labour and sponsorship are applied, the social and human consequences seriously threaten the human security of migrants. The recent mass expulsion of 250,000 undocumented workers by Saudi authorities in the last two months of 2013 is a case in point. Dubbed “operation clean up” by the Ministry of Labour, the arrests were not just accompanied by beatings and confinements in inhumane detention camps, but also by violent assaults led by angry Saudi male crowds in labour camps. In the Manfouha neighbourhood south of Riyadh, such attacks left scores of mostly Ethiopians dead.42 The role of the executive as opposed to the judiciary is shown by the support of the Ministry of Interior for the “operation clean up.” It created special panels in passport departments that investigate into over-stayers of visas, and impose 40

41 42

Hertog, “State and Private Sector in the gcc”; Stefan Hertog, Arab Gulf States: An Assessment of Nationalisation Policies (Gulf Labour Market and Migration – Research Paper, No.  1, 2014), 6, accessible at http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/32156/ GLMM%20ResearchPaper_01-2014.pdf?sequence=1. Ibid., 2–8. Laetitia Bader and Adam Coogle, “Saudis’ Mass Expulsion Putting Somalis in Danger,” Middle East Research and Information Project, March 18, 2014, accessible at http://www .merip.org/mero/mero031814?ip_login_no_cache=bad33d7634da101a71cf366bbaadb414/.

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penalties including prison sentences. Clearly, none of this involved the Kingdom’s judicial system and no appeals were handled by the courts.43 Violent incidents such as those of Manfouha are not unfortunate cases which states in the region have difficulty controlling. Instead, they are related to the states’ reliance on mass migration to pursue development plans, the private sector’s profits that heavily rely on employing foreign labour, as well as a technocratic approach to mobility and population movement. While such ideas have existed elsewhere – guest labour in Western Europe – the manageable scale of foreign labour as well as checks on the inhumane consequences of this policy led to landmark reversals including reforms to Germany’s naturalisation laws which initiated changes in jus sanguinis. In addition, parliamentary oversight of immigration policy led to restrictive changes to the eu’s asylum policy, allowing either assimilationist or multi-cultural policies to become meaningfully pursued. In contrast, mass migration in the Gulf with its 70 to 90 percent peaks in Kuwait, Qatar, and the uae, poses its own unique restrictions on any meaningful integration schemes, obviating any prospects for rule-governed human security among migrants in the Gulf. Fears of losing authenticity, fears of being numerically outnumbered and marginalised continue to dominate public debates, and lead to control over migrant labour, their securitisation and subsequent marginalisation. Given the state’s interest in economic diversification, the needs of a globalised oil-rentier economy to generate income from non-oil sectors, and the preponderance of a rent-generating construction and service sector, Gulf states try to limit the amount of dissent especially from domestic constituencies. For example, the ruler of Dubai responded to critiques of Dubai’s economic boom, i.e. the rising number of migrants, by arguing that: “As for those who focus on the side effects [of Dubai’s economic boom], who consider them negative and try to inspire fear, they are short-sighted or just speaking their minds or suffering from inferiority complexes, which are hard to cure.”44 In turn, to respond to outside critiques, suggested and partially implemented reforms focus on alleviating the more extreme forms of unequal treatment. For payment questions and in order counter the problem of withholding earned income by employers for alleged misconduct or contract violations, a state-supervised, centralised wage payment system was recently introduced. To change the personalised sponsorship system, kafala, with its potential for abuse especially among domestic household labour, a centralised sponsorship system has been 43 44

Arab News, “ksa Toughens Stance on Illegals,” April 15, 2014, http://www.arabnews.com/ news/555891. Cited in Herb, “A Nation of Bureaucrats,” 390.

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proposed. Concerning naturalisation, Al-Qassemi suggested a state-supervised naturalisation process based on a limited number of wealthy expats. Yet, neither in substance, nor in numbers, do such reforms change the “hardening” of the inner meaning of citizenship rights for migrants. This illustrates how the lack of freedom from physical and material insecurities among migrants is structurally embedded in high-modernist state policies and a strong emphasis on the security of the national political community.

Naturalisation and Jus Nexi in the Gulf

There have been prior reforms to citizenship laws in the Gulf, allowing the acquisition of citizenship beyond male jus sanguinis. A first reform was based on altering the tribal and patriarchal male lineage, to also include female lineage. Other ad hoc naturalisation decisions by executive order have existed for different, often favoured, groups and individuals, with some of these individuals even holding high administrative and political positions.45 However, in order to prevent equal status even to naturalised citizens, jus nexi has been used to exclude a substantial part of these naturalised citizens, by requiring for many governmental services and privileges not just citizenship but also a proof of more substantive links to the territory and its people: A family book.46 Naturalised citizens and those who are not from male nationals of Gulf countries often do not possess this. In Bahrain, a particular ethnic (Arab Sunni Muslim) and financial (wealth) component has been included as a “nexus” for citizenship. Effectively, long term residents (more than 15 years for Arab and 25 years for others) could claim Bahraini citizenship if they own real estate property, yet even then they did not enjoy rights to political participation through voting and running for office. A sectarian dimension is implicit as invariably, the large majority of Arab migrants are in fact Sunni Muslims, a very divisive issue given Bahrain’s strong sectarian tensions. In Saudi Arabia, the criteria for “nexus” are particularly revealing: The kingdom reformed its naturalisation laws in October 2004, and some public commentators, such as Al-Qassemi, have welcomed it as a model to be followed by other Gulf states. Religious and ethnic considerations figure prominently in its list of criteria for “nexus.” In line with the Arab League’s alleged ­commitment 45 46

Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, “Give Expats an Opportunity to Earn uae Citizenship,” Gulf News, September 22, 2013, accessible at www.gulfnews.com. Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, “The Book that Proves Some Emiratis Are More Equal than Others.”

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to a permanent solution in Palestine, these laws bar Palestinians from becoming naturalised Saudi citizens. In addition to these religious, ethnic, and political considerations, the law introduced a point system, in which points are distributed according to developmentist criteria, primarily professional and educational qualifications. The more sought after these qualifications are in Saudi Arabia, the easier it is to obtain citizenship. Particular family stipulations include that the grandfather of a Saudi mother who wants to pass down her citizenship to her offspring needs to be a Saudi national, yet even then it depends on the number of points that a child obtained. In a summary of the new nexus of blood-line, that introduces a particular form of gendered citizenship, a Saudi newspaper explains: The child of a Saudi woman who is married to a foreigner will get one point upon reaching puberty. Educational qualifications of not less than secondary level will add another point. If both the mother’s father and grandfather are Saudi, the applicant will gain six points. If only the father is Saudi, the child gets only two points. If the mother has Saudi brothers and sisters, two more points will be given. When the applicant obtains a minimum of seven points, the citizenship committee will recommend considering the application for citizenship. If not, the application will be withheld.47 What appears from all these criteria is a systematic exclusion of those that have not intermarried with Saudi nationals. Ironically, this exclusion also directly discourage any Saudi nationals from considering mixed marriages, as the point system officialises discrimination against “unpure” Saudis. In fact, in its attempt to establish nexus, the law even introduces Saudi national “purity” as a concept where it had not existed in the past, allowing for jus sanguinis to transpire even when nexus is introduced. Conclusion With this contribution on migration and marginalisation of citizenship in the Gulf, I attempted to illustrate the mechanisms through which the marginal status of migrants is linked to citizenship questions of national populations, namely the foundation of national communities based on “besieged empowerment,” the interior hardening of migrant rights, as well as an increased 47

Arab News, September 8, 2013, cited at http://www.arabnews.com/news/463903.

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­autonomy from judicial control mechanism allowing a high-modernist ideology to be more strongly pursued. The result of these mechanisms is that migrants’ marginal status is reproduced, even when reforms such as the Saudi naturalisation law are introduced that seek new forms of “nexus.” First, in the Arab Gulf region, citizenship scholars are faced with a particular issue of marginalisation of migrants due to the transfer of friend/enemy to the domestic area, in which Gulf political communities have been created. As mentioned, these are not based on outside enemies, but rather on the very distinguishable domestic cultural and numerical hegemony of an expatriate population which raises questions about the longevity and authenticity of the national population. As a consequence, the state’s role has become that of protector of the national population vis-à-vis domestic threats, which makes any questioning of the non-national population’s marginal status subversive and sometimes very strongly contested. Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi’s admiration of the Saudi point system is a case in point, when his suggestion to introduce a naturalisation law along similar lines (yet with much fewer numbers and with much tougher criteria) triggered a wave of protest and violent reactions within uae social media. This “hardening” of the inner shell of citizenship remains in a dialectic relationship to the outer accessibility of both (renewable) residency and work rights, supporting core constituencies of the political elite that also includes non-national populations. The state’s development plans and rentier economy, as a model of business, quasi-liberal lifestyle and political stability, remains regionally and globally highly attractive. Second, the marginalisation of migration is part of a high-modernist social engineering policy. Uncontrolled by a judiciary or an elected parliament, the population policies have not just favoured large-scale developments, but have transformed these into core criteria of these countries’ statehood. Any reforms that aim at changing the marginality of migration remain resisted by local economic stake holders. On occasion, the perceived loss of authenticity by national populations results in large-scale attacks on migrants such as those reported in Saudi Arabia, both by the state and by angered populations. Yet given the economic importance of migrant populations, such attacks are only small drops in the bucket that have little long-term effect. In the uae high population growth rates since 2010 of about 5 percent annual growth is almost entirely migration driven, given stagnant and declining birth rates among national populations. Third, existing and proposed naturalisation laws follow the idea of “nexus” that has become common in advanced liberal democracies. Yet, the implementation of “nexus” reproduces and officialises jus sanguinis, and is in line not only with the developmentalist agenda of the state, but also with its

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­high-modernist structure that remains unchecked by a judiciary or parliamentary oversight. In fact, given the numerical marginalisation and fears of a loss of authenticity that structures national populations, the lack of public involvement in naturalisation decision may even be a necessity to at least cushion the marginal status of some of the migrants. As the public reaction to Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi’s tentative discussion indicates, opening the Pandora’s box of naturalisation can unleash very strong public reactions that may also reinforce the marginalisation of migrant populations. Last, the Gulf represents a case in which aspects of rule-governed security, physical and material security, as well individual security remain significantly underdeveloped. As has been explained in this contribution, this is intrinsically linked to a strong emphasis on group security as well as a lack of independent judicial control mechanisms, which has increased with rentier high-modernist state policies. Bibliography Al-Qassemi, Sultan Sooud. “Give Expats an Opportunity to Earn UAE Citizenship.” Gulf News, September 22, 2013, accessible at www.gulfnews.com. Al-Qassemi, Sultan Sooud. “The Book that Proves Some Emiratis Are More Equal than Others.” The National, February 7, 2010. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991. Arab News. “KSA Toughens Stance on Illegals.” April 15, 2014, http://www.arabnews .com/news/555891. Attiy, Ahmad. “Migrant Workers in Kuwait: The Role of State Institutions.” Middle East Viewpoint Series. The Middle East Institute, February 2, 2010, accessible at http:// www.mei.edu/content/migrant-workers-kuwait-role-state-institutions#edn2. Bader, Laetitia and Adam Coogle. “Saudis’ Mass Expulsion Putting Somalis in Danger.” Middle East Research and Information Project, March 18, 2014, accessible at http:// www.merip.org/mero/mero031814?ip_login_no_cache=bad33d7634da101a71cf366b baadb414/. Benhabib, Seyla. The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Blitz, Brad K., and Maureen Lunch (eds). Statelessness and Citizenship: A Comparative Study on the Benefits of Nationality. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011. Blitz, Brad K., and Maureen Lynch. “Statelessness and Deprivation of Nationality.” In Statelessness and Citizenship: A Comparative Study on the Benefits of Nationality, edited by Brad K. Blitz and Maureen Lunch, 1–22. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011.

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Brown, Nathan J. The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Gulf. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Castles, Stephen, and Alastair Davidson. Citizenship and Migration: Globalisation and the Politics of Belonging. New York, Routledge, 2000. Chatham House, “Future Trends in the GCC – Workshop Summary,” 2012. http:// www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/public/Research/Middle%20 East/0512gcc_summarytwo.pdf. Fudge, Judy. “Making Claims for Migrant Labour.” Citizenship Studies 18 (2014): 29–45. Gardner, Andrew M. “Gulf Migration and the Family.” Journal of Arabian Studies 1 (2011): 3–25. DOI: 10.1080/21534764.2011.576043. Herb, Michael. “A Nation of Bureaucrats: Political Participation and Economic Diversification in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 4 (2009): 375–395. Hertog, Steffen. Arab Gulf States: An Assessment of Nationalisation Policies. Gulf Labour Market and Migration – Research Paper, No. 1, 2014, accessible at http:// cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/32156/GLMM%20ResearchPaper_01-2014 .pdf?sequence=1. Hertog, Steffen. “State and Private Sector in the GCC after the Arab Uprising.” Journal of Arabian Studies 3 (2014): 174–195. DOI: 10.1080/21534764.2013.863678. Joppke, Christian. “Why Liberal States Accept Unwanted Immigration.” World Politics 50 (1998): 266–293. Joppke, Christian. Citizenship and Immigration. Cambridge, Polity Press, 2010. Kaldor, Mary. “Human Security.” Society and Economy 33 (2011): 441–448. Longva, Anh Nga. Walls Built on Sand: Migration, Exclusion and Society in Kuwait. Boulder, Co: Westview, 1999. Okruhlik, Gwenn. “Dependence, Disdain, and Distance: State, Labor, and Citizenship in the Arab Gulf.” In Industrialisation in the Gulf: A Socio-Economic Revolution, edited by Jean Francois Seznec and Mimi Kirk, 125–142. Abingdon and New York, Routledge, 2011. Partrick, N. Nationalism in the Gulf States. Research Paper No 5, Kuwait Program on Development, Governance and Globalisation in the Gulf States, October, 2009. Qassimi: “The Sponsorship System is on the Wrong Side of History,” The National, October 17, 2010, accessible at www.thenational.ae. Sater, James. “Citizenship and Migration in the Gulf,” Citizenship Studies 18 (2014): 292–302. Schmitt, Carl. Der Begriff des Politischen. Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 3rd edition, 1963. Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. Seeberg, Peter and Zaid Eyadat (eds). Migration, Security, and Citizenship in the Middle East. New York, Palgrave, 2013. Shachar, Ayelet. The Birthright Lottery. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

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UN-DESA and OECD, 2013. World Migration in Figures, accessible at http://www.oecd .org/els/mig/World-Migration-in-Figures.pdf. Vora, N. “Business Elites, Unofficial Citizenship, and Privatized Governance in Dubai.” Viewpoints: Migration in the Gulf. Washington DC, The Middle East Institute, 2010, 46–48. Weil, P. “Access to Citizenship.” In Citizenship Today, edited by A. Aleinikoff and D. Klusmeyer, 17–35. Washington D.C., Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001.

chapter 9

The Arab Spring and the “Iron Triangle”: Regime Survival and the Conditions of Citizenship in the Arab Middle East Nils A. Butenschøn

Citizenship in the Maelstrom of Power Politics

“The central problem of government in the Arab world today is political legitimacy. The shortage of this indispensable political source largely accounts for the volatile nature of Arab politics and the autocratic, unstable character of all the present Arab governments.”1 This observation is not a reference to the current political upheavals in the Arab Middle East, as it obviously could have been, but represents the essence of Michael C. Hudson’s analysis in his ­well-known book, Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy, written about forty years ago. Hudson analysed the challenges of political transition in the Arab world in the 1960s and -70s within the theoretical paradigm of political modernisation. His cautious optimism that the radical Arab republics, if they ­overcome a number of structural weaknesses, were forerunners for a democratic transition in the region did not come through, but his take on underlying structural problems related to political legitimacy on the country level represented a more nuanced analysis of the relationship between rulers and the ruled than was common among modernisation theorists at the time.2 More recently, but well before the Arab Uprisings, important contributions that enhance our understanding of the political dynamics that inhibit transitions to citizen-based political regimes has been published. These works 1 Michael C. Hudson, Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977), 2. For more on Hudson’s relevance, see my “State, Power, and Citizenship in the Middle East: A Theoretical Introduction,” in Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications, ed. Nils A. Butenschøn, Uri Davis, and Manuel Hassassian (Syracuse, n.y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000). 2 Walter Z. Laqueur (ed.), The Middle East in Transition: Studies in Contemporary History (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958); Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (New York: Free Press, 1958); Manfred Halpern, “Middle Eastern Armies and the New Middle Classes,” in The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries, ed. John J. Johnson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 277–315.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_011

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a­ ddress the question of “authoritarian resilience,” why the dominant pattern of authoritarian political orders, both in the monarchies and the republics, have withstood the “waves of democracy” in other parts of the world after the end of the Cold War.3 However, my argument is that, in addition to a focus on structural and ideological underpinnings of authoritarianism, more analytical focus should be oriented towards the political dynamics and strategies of rulers and other central actors under the notorious unstable conditions of modern Arab state-building. Citizens and rulers alike are confronted with the challenges of securing their needs and interests within the maelstrom of power politics that surrounds their region. This impacts the relations between citizens and ruling elites and the range of strategies they are free to choose. What we observe on the behaviour level is the politics of citizenship: How the parties in the state-citizen relationship use available instruments and resources to secure their interests as they see it. The advantage of the state parties (particularly the centralised authoritarian states) is that they control state institutions with a monopoly of coercive powers (the legal system and police and internal security forces) and access to the country’s strategic commodities and financial resources. This position gives the ruling elites strong cards in defining the terms of their contractual relations with the citizens, known as “authoritarian bargaining” in the contemporary history of the Middle East. The most powerful card on the hands of the citizens is ways of withholding support for the regime, especially if organised on a collective basis, for instance by boycotting elections, or as a last resort, to organise a rebellion. As the Arab Uprisings demonstrated, and as is well known from other historic experiences, even the most authoritarian regime is dependent on some level of acceptance by their citizens. In this chapter we will focus particularly on the strategic options of ruling elites in developing citizenship policies, considering the challenges of state building and political stability in the Middle East. As already indicated, the regional setting is extremely complicated, also from an analytical point of view for the study of citizenship and state-society relationships. We need to take into consideration the intertwined processes between local, regional, and 3 See, for example, Oliver Schlumberger (ed.), Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2007); ­Steven ­Heydemann and Reinoud Leenders, “Authoritarian Learning and Authoritarian Resilience: Regime Responses to the ‘Arab Awakening’,” Globalizations 8 (2011): 647–653; Steve Hess, “From the Arab Spring to the Chinese Winter: The Institutional Sources of Authoritarian ­Vulnerability and resilience in Egypt, Tunisia, and China,” International Political Science R ­ eview 34 (2013): 254–272.

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international levels. The state becomes problematic as a given framework for analysis because of contested state ideas,4 fragmented demographics, strongly politicised sub- and supra-national ideologies, and heavy interference by ­external powers in internal politics. Obviously, there are great variations when it comes to challenges to stability and legitimacy between the states of the region, ­between monarchies and republics, but also within these two groups of states. But most observers agree that shortage of regime legitimacy represents a basic problem in Arab politics across the region and poses a challenge in the search for a new political order. The historical reasons for this state of affairs are also generally accepted to be related to the way in which most Arab states were established, not least the involvement of colonial powers in the aftermath of World War i at a particular critical stage in the establishment of modern states. Patterns of regime formation based on non-participation by the citizens were introduced and made imprints on regional politics right up to the current era. As seen from the ruler, under such conditions, a power-base for the sustainability of the regime that compensates for its lack of popular legitimacy and other sources of regime sustainability (infrastructure, nation-wide institutions, competent bureaucracy) must be established. This can be achieved by co-opting important elites and personalities within the industrial and financial sectors and community leaders commanding the loyalty of important groups in society, i.e. exploiting neopatrimonial structures in society. Citizens on their part will be inclined to seek safety and social security either by making use of the same neopatrimonial mechanisms to access important decisionmaking bodies or personalities, or alternatively, to detach themselves from the state and seek fulfilment of basic needs in existing primordial structures such as family, village, clan, tribe, or religious community to compensate for state negligence and possibly for building buffers against oppressive state institutions. This is particularly relevant in areas where people consider the ruling government to be against them, not their protector. In such environments, where the trust between citizens (or large group of citizens) and the government has ­broken totally down (as can be observed currently in Syria, Iraq, ­Yemen, and Libya, and to a lesser degree in Egypt and Bahrain) the conditions

4 The “State idea” represents the factors which make the population in a country identify with the state, a concept developed by the American geographer Richard Hartshorne, see Richard Hartshorne, “The Functional Approach in Political Geography,” Annals, Association of A ­ merican Geographers 40 (1950): 95–130.

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of democratic citizenship are difficult, indeed. The message of the Arab Uprisings was as a cry for politics based on trust and legitimacy, on dignity (karama) and accountability; that the needs of the citizens should be the first priority of the leaders.

The First Leg of the “Iron Triangle”: Neopatrimonialism as Power-Base

A dominant explanation of the lack of transition to democracy in the Arab world has for a long time been variations over the notion of “authoritarianism.” Most states in the Arab Middle East are authoritarian in the sense that the political system is under the control of ruling elites and maintained by more or less repressive means. But how do we explain their persistence? A number of approaches to this question have been suggested, among them three that each contribute with important insights: The first, known as “authoritarian resilience,” seeks answers in the institutional organisation of power in society, centred around a centralised and populist political party with a personalistic and patriarchical leadership and commanding de facto monopoly of representation in decision-making organs of the state. Co-optation of key groups through distribution of patronage is also seen as an important mechanism underpinning elite alliances in support of the regime.5 The second, “the rentier state,” typically refers to the oil-rich Gulf monarchies where citizens lack fiscal basis for demanding democracy. Instead of financing public services through taxation, they are covered through natural resource revenues, some of which are re-distributed to citizens. The political system is maintained by a contractual relation between the rulers and the ruled, strictly controlled by the rulers, whereby citizens are handed benefits to cover basic needs against refraining from demanding political rights.6 The third approach, “authoritarian 5 “Authoritarian resilience” has been applied not only to Middle Eastern countries, but also for explaining the persistence of the Communist rule in China after the Tiananmen demonstrations in 1989. See Andrew J. Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience,” Journal of Democracy 14 (2003): 6–17; Kellee S. Tsai, Capitalism Without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007). For a comparison between the Middle East and China, see Steve Hess, “From the Arab Spring to the Chinese Winter.” 6 See Giacomo Luciani, “Economic Foundations of Democracy and Authoritarianism: The Arab World in Comparative Perspective,” Arab Studies Quarterly 10 (1988): 457–475; Giacomo Luciani (ed.), The Arab State (London: Routledge, 1990).

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bargaining,” follows the same logic as the rentier state, whereby some rights are exchanged against others, but without the oil revenues as the distributive mechanism. With particular reference to Egypt, Roel Meier explains how the bargaining was applied at different stages in the development of the republic  – but also its shortcomings in the long run, forming an important background for the Arab Uprisings in 2011.7 A Wide-spread Pattern, Varying Strategies What is evident from this brief discussion of relevant literature on Arab authorianism is that there is a wide-spread pattern among ruling elites in the region of seeking to maintain and strengthen their control over key state institutions by establishing citizenship regimes that keep citizens at a safe distance from real political influence. This should not necessarily be interpreted as an inherent disposition among Arab politicians of authoritarianism, but rather as defensive and protective measures in a situation of weak state formations, a general lack of trust between rulers and ruled (and among different groups of citizens), and weak traditions for Weberian state formation. As discussed by Robert Springborg and James Sater in this volume, rulers exploit the tradition of patron-client relationships as a strategy of forming alliances that can strengthen the power-base of the regime (what Springborg calls “instrumental clientelism” as opposed to “deep clientelism” or “organic clientelism,” typical of traditional societies). In the case of Syria, discussed by Raymond Hinnebusch and Ola Rifai in their chapter, a pragmatic use of ­instrumental clientelism became a central modus operandi of Hafez al-Asad in attempts to stabilise his regime and balance the interests of contending elites. Comparing the two cases of Morocco and Syria in terms of how the two regimes apply state organised clientelism is particularly interesting in view of the many differences between the two countries, not least in the way the regimes handled the uprisings in 2011. In the case of Morocco, Sater demonstrates how the regime of King Mohammed vi, enjoying at the outset a more deep-seated legitimacy than the Syrian regime, “… was able to build a new system of patronage inside liberalised civil society that offered opportunities for incremental political changes under the auspices of the old, undemocratic regime.”8 Since he came to power in 1999, the king presented several plans and

7 For a more comprehensive discussion of “authoritarian bargaining” and its relevance for ­citizenship regimes, see chapter 2, Roel Meijer, “Citizenship, Social Pacts, Authoritarian Bargaining, and the Arab Uprisings” in this volume. 8 See chapter 5, James Sater, “Patronage and Democratic Citizenship in Morocco,” in this volume.

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initiatives in order to reform Morocco as a liberalised autocracy,9 whereby important representatives of the middle class and civil society, as well as rural chiefs and religious leaders were co-opted, without undermining the final authority of the monarchy. Furthermore, women’s rights have been enhanced considerably by the regime, increasing the popularity of the king among the middle classes Thus, when country-wide demonstrations were organised on 20 February 2011 demanding substantial democratic reforms, important segments of civil s­ ociety did not take part. Instead, two weeks later, the king created the Consultative Commission for Constitutional Revision, signalling a willingness to listen to the protests. Consequently, the Moroccan version of the Arab Spring did not escalate into total confrontation between protesters and the regime. In fact few, even among the demonstrators, demanded the abolition of the monarchy itself. But they did voice demands for reforms, accountability, end to corruption, etc. The main reason they did not succeed was that influential Islamist Party pjd (Parti de la Justice et du Développement) did not join because it was under the patronage of the system. In Syria, the well-developed but fragile system of bureaucratic lines of command and co-optation of a variety of economic elites and community leaders that Bashar al-Asad inherited in 2000 from (and held together by) his authoritarian father Hafez al-Asad could not withstand the combined internal and external pressures as they mounted in 2011. Bashar’s challenges of securing his regime’s power base were much more difficult than those faced by Morocco’s Muhammed vi. In contrast to Morocco where the state and the kingdom, comparatively speaking, are well established in the minds of the people, Syria – as Hinnebusch and Rifai explains: “…is an especial challenge for nation-builders since it does not benefit from distinctively Syrian national myths or a history of separate statehood and suffers from imperialist-imposed artificial boundaries incongruent with geographic bilad ash-sham. The result is that both sub- and supra-state identities have powerfully competed with loyalties to the state and, despite many decades of Syrian statehood, these have been kept alive by their instrumental use, by both ruling elites and opposition movements, against each other.”10 Furthermore, a special characteristic of the Asads’ regime was its primary base in the Alawite minority (12 per cent) and its solid support among most of the other minorities (apart from the Kurds), and secular segments. The main challenge was to maintain sufficient loyalty among the large Sunni majority 9 10

Daniel Brumberg, “The Trap of Liberalised Autocracy,” Journal of Democracy 13 (2011): 6–14. See chapter 3, Ray Hinnebusch and Olai Rifai, “Syria: Identity, State Formation, and ­Citizenship” in this volume.

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(70 per cent), not least with a view to the brutal suppression of the uprising against Hafez al-Asad by the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood that culminated with massacres in 1982. When protests broke out in 2011 Asad could still count on sufficient support from his army and bureaucracy, from minorities and, to a large extent, the urban elite, including Sunnis in Damascus and Aleppo. As pointed out by Hinnebusch and Rafai, in contrast to Egypt and Tunisia, the uprising in Syria was unable to converge on the centres of power, and a stalemate soon resulted. At the outset the protesters were non-violent. The fatal step by the regime was that it chose to respond by disproportionate violence and mass arrests, possibly overreacting after observing the fate of presidents in Tunisia and Egypt, escalating the conflict on an increasingly sectarian basis beyond control. Lebanon represents another political system in the region that is also fundamentally built around clientelist structures, but very differently from either Morocco or Syria, clearly impacting on the conditions of citizenship in the country. Like Syria, it is a secular republic composted of a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups originating in the Ottoman province of Syria. But in sharp contrast to its eastern neighbour, Lebanon is not governed by a highly centralised state ruled by an authoritarian President; we find a very weak central government and a weak army, a system of uneasy co-existence and power-sharing dominated by changing alliances of families, clans, militias, and religious and communal leaders. As Samir Khalaf puts it: “This persisting feature of Lebanon’s pluralism reflects, among other things, the deficiency of secular loyalties, class ties and other civic attachments and the survival of sectarian, communal and primordial sentiments. One might perhaps argue that had the earlier class conflicts succeeded in eroding or containing these feudal and communal loyalties, Lebanon might have … become more of a nation-state and less of a precarious mosaic of pluralistic and fragmented communities.11 Given its structural weaknesses it is surprising that the Lebanese political system has survived over the years in spite of the wars and political upheavals in the surrounding countries, as well as internal upheavals; it survived the ­Pan-Arabism of the 1950’s and -60’s, the devastating civil war in the -70’s and -80’s, Israeli invasions and onslaughts ever since the late 1970’s, Syria’s deep interference in the country until the withdrawal in 2005, and the existence of parallel security structures not under effective control of the Lebanese state, 11

Samir Khalaf, Lebanon’s Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 23. See also Farid El Khazen, The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon, 1967–1976 (London: i.b. Tauris, 2000); Raghid El-Solh, Lebanon and Arabism: National Identity and State Formation (London and New York: i.b. Tauris, 2004).

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related as that is to the regional security situation. And finally, Lebanon has (so far) survived the deepest crisis that has escalated after the Arab Uprisings, namely the Sunni/Shia confrontations across the region and the civil war in Syria. This crisis involve contending Lebanese parties on opposing sides and has struck Lebanon at the very heart of its system of co-existing community structures, threatening existing balances of power. The influx of more than one million Syrian refugees only aggravates the situation. One reason why Lebanon as a weak state does not disintegrate under such pressures is that the state itself seeks to stay outside the conflicts that surround it. This is a well-known pattern: The civil war 1975–1989 was not a war between the government and its army on one side against rebels on the other, but between contending coalitions of Lebanese non-state militias (including Lebanese-based Palestinian militias). Even when neighbouring countries (Syria, Israel) invaded Lebanon or were involved in warfare on Lebanese soil, a regular occurrence since the mid 1970’s, they were not confronted by the ­Lebanese army but either by Palestinian or Shia militias. The parallel and semi-autonomous power-structures in Lebanon, internally organised on the basis of neopatrimonial relations, keep the country going, even under the current conditions when the central political institutions are almost paralyzed.12 The paradox of Lebanese politics is that it is the weakness of the central authority that more than anything accounts for its ability to withstand the extreme challenges and pressures mounted by conflicting internal and external forces. This is an aspect of Lebanese politics that explains that it has a public life and discourse that is relatively free and open, making Beirut a hub for Arab political and intellectual networks and debates. Lebanese citizenship is likewise caught in a paradox: The relations between citizens and the state are weak; the content of Lebanese citizenship is basically confined to that of ­holding a passport and being protected by the state’s representatives when abroad. Otherwise, the extent and depth of a citizen’s membership in a polity is basically defined within the religious community that the citizen belongs to. This is itself a challenge to the idea of equal citizenship. You cannot claim ­political rights in the state of Lebanon if you do not belong to one of the eighteen ­officially recognised religious communities. To summarise, the general pattern that emerges is that while the coercive power of the state is exercised through its legal and security arms, the sources of political authority to exercise the power is more problematic. Since the loyalty 12

Lebanon did not have an elected president between May 2014 and November 2016. ­ arliamentary elections should have been held in 2013, but has been postponed several P times as the existing assembly, elected in 2009, has extended its mandate.

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of the citizens towards the organs and institutions of the state cannot be taken for granted, challenged by sub- or supra-state identities and loyalties, regimes need to compensate for this fragility in its own power-base. The strategies vary depending on historical and contextual variables, but one way or the other the regime must resort to exploiting alternative hierarchical power-structures. It seems reasonable to say that a “re-traditionalisation” has happened as a result of the gradual retreat of the state as provider of social security and services. Thus, citizenship – being member of the political community – becomes a question of loyalty towards leaders on different levels in society, not a question of equal and active participation in the life of the nation.

The Second Leg in the “Iron Triangle”: Citizenship in the Regional Balance of Power

How did Arab regimes that were challenged by uprisings seek support and strength on the regional level to compensate for lack of legitimacy on the national level? What kinds of alliances were formed? How did these policies ­impact on the conditions of citizenship? One of the most fascinating aspects of the 2011 Arab Uprisings is the way in which they swept through the region as an unstoppable fire. It was as if hundreds of thousands responded to a command to rise up – but there was no unified command, no central leadership, no strategy developed by the vanguards of a revolution. However the lack of coordination of the mass movement erupting simultaneously across countries might be explained, and in spite of the fact that the protests in each country were addressed at national leaders with slogans for change in the individual countries – there were no traditional Pan-Arab calls for an all-Arab revolution – the uprisings were strictly Arab in reach and message. It is often contended that the notion of “the Arab World” does not reflect a reality. But we can safely conclude that the Arab Spring was a regional phenomenon reflecting the reality of an Arab public arena.13 The regional dimension of the uprisings was also reflected in the reactions and policies on the level of governments and heads of states. Some were caught in the fire and could not escape, others considered their defences and moves closely, including in relation to the regional balance of forces. ­Confronted by an explosive public mood and the uncertainties and the unpredictability 13

See for example Hassan Hanafi cited in Marc Lynch, “The Big Think Behind the Arab Spring: Do the Middle East’s Revolutions Have a Unifying Ideology?” Foreign Policy (­November 28, 2011).

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c­ reated by the fall of leaders in Tunisia and Egypt regimes were left with the ­dilemma of how to position themselves. In the short term rulers had little time  to find together in any concerted efforts to withstand the threatening revolts. The history of Arab regional alliances and rivalries is extremely complex as it can be observed at the intersection of power politics between regional interstate relations and great power geopolitics. In the 1950s and -60s the grand schemes of pan-Arab nationalists lead by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser to unify the “Arab Nation” met numerous obstacles. The basic motive was to correct the divisive politics of the colonial powers that had split the Arabs into “artificial” states and made the creation of the State of Israel possible in the midst of the Arab world, and to establish Arab political unity that could stand independent of the superpowers and their cold war rivalries. At the same time, the individual newly independent regimes were compelled to defend their own interests and security, and to define their position in the geopolitical matrix. This early on exposed the fragility of many Arab states and the deep cleavages that worked against Arab unity.14 More than any other region in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the Arab world experienced interventions by the military in politics and frequent coups. Syria was first with the coup of 1949, followed by some 20 more coups (or attempted coups) in that country alone until Hafez al-Asad seized and consolidated power in 1970. The 1952 coup in Egypt, headed by the Free Officers, became more of a defining moment in modern Arab history because the officers not only took over the positions of state powers, they also initiated a reform program for transforming and modernising the Egyptian economy and society. Egypt was not only a hero for Arab nationalists, it was also a model for the transformation of Arab societies; Egypt was the future. According to Elizabeth Picard the Egyptian coup and other coups ousting traditional rulers in the region in

14

“Everyone” wanted Arab unity at the time, but who should define the purpose and c­ ontent of this unity? The rivalry for Arab leadership developed into an “Arab Cold War.” Ruling elites were caught between raison de la nation (Pan-Arabism) and raison d’état (sovereignty). Millions were mobilised also then, but the Arab cold war was mainly fought over the heads of the citizens. See Malcolm Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal Abd al-Nasir and his Rivals, 1958–1970, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); Bahgat Korany, “Alien and Besieged Yet Here to Stay: The Contradictions of the Arab Territorial State,” in The Foundations of the Arab State, ed. Ghassan Salamé (London: Croom Helm, 1987); Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, (eds.), The Foreign Policies of Middle East States (Boulder co and London: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 8.

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the 1950’s and 1960’s were looked upon rather positively at the time, including by many international observers and scholars.15 The political dynamics and popularity of the new military regime in Egypt, particularly when Gamal Abdel Nasser as one of the Free Officers came to power, cannot be explained only with reference to its role as forceful moderniser of the Egyptian society. It is first and foremost Nasser’s position as the “liberator of the Arabs” in the critical early years of Arab independence that gave the new regime its unprecedented legitimacy among Arabs across the region. His spectacular nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company in 1956 and the way he survived not only a serious assassination attempt but also the conspiracy by Britain, France, and Israel to topple him during the Suez War later that year gave him “almost unlimited credit in his own country and throughout the Arab world.” According to Adeed Dawisha, “[f]rom then on, Nasser’s legitimacy as Egypt’s president, and the legitimacy of the political order which he had created were not to be questioned…”16 The symbolic significance of the Suez success in raising Arab morale can hardly be overrated in view of the devastating defeat in the 1948–49 Palestine war. Walid Khazziha underlines this strongly: “… the political, economic, and social life of society was monopolised and the state came to rule supreme over individuals and the community as a whole. Perhaps at no time in the modern history of the Arab World was the impact of Palestine on the Arab state structure more evident and direct than it was in the decade which followed the Arab defeat in 1948.”17 It is perhaps forgotten today, but at the height of his career Nasser’s popularity reached almost superhuman dimensions overshadowing any rational foundation of a contractual relationship between the ruler and the ruled. As Iyad Bin Ashur describes it: “The relationship between the raʾis [the leader] and the people is a direct one: immediate, emotional, marvellous, almost ‘bodily’. It forms the backbone of the political system, in a situation where political organisations are no more than tools for mobilisation and recruitment for the sake of a plebiscitic, populist democracy (bayʾiyya ghifariyya).”18 We have to take this general frame of mind into consideration to understand  how it was possible to merge the states of Egypt and Syria into the 15 16 17 18

Elizabeth Picard, “Arab Military in Politics: From Revolutionary Plot to Authoritarian State,” in The Arab State, ed. Giacomo Luciani (London: Routledge, 1990), 190. Adeed Dawisha, “Arab Regimes: Legitimacy and Foreign Policy,” in The Arab State, ed. ­Giacomo Luciani (London: Routledge, 1990), 291. Walid Khazziha, “The Impact of Palestine on Arab Politics,” in The Arab State, ed. ­Giacomo Luciani (London: Routledge, 1990), 302–303. Cited and translated from Arabic in Nazih N. Ayubi, Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (London: i.b. Tauris, 1995), 204.

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­United Arab Republic (uar) in 1958. To put it simply, Syria was in a deep political crisis, threatening the integrity of the state. Finding it almost impossible to stabilise a Syrian government, nationalist and left-wing parties (headed by the Baʿath party) supported by the army, approached President Nasser and proposed a Syrian-Egyptian federation. Nasser finally agreed, but only on his own terms; Egypt-Syria should be a unitary state headed by Nasser, Syrian political parties should be dissolved and the army’s political role should be terminated.19 The Syrian parties were, it seems, so desperate to get a share of Nasser’s charisma that they accepted his conditions, giving up not only Syria’s sovereignty but also their own autonomy as political actors. The negotiators were furthermore driven by the exalted pro-unionist opinion in Syria. Said one ­participant: “We followed the masses. The crowds were drunk … Anyone at that hour who dared oppose unity – the people would tear their heads off.” Raymond Hinnebusch comments: “This episode dramatically exposed how little legitimacy the Syrian state enjoyed among a mass public mobilised by Pan-Arab dreams.”20 With the total marginalisation of Syrian elites by the Egyptians and the building up of Syrian opposition the union could not survive for very long; the uar was dissolved in 1961, leaving scars and frustrations in the Arab nationalist movement and Syria without a solution to its problem of finding a common platform for its fractured communities. As indicated by Khazziha above, Nasser also laid the foundations for the authoritarian populist state as a model for the definition of citizenship in the Arab radical republics that were established in this phase and were to last right up to the recent Arab Uprisings. As was demonstrated to the extreme in the case of the setting up of the United Arab Republic, Nasser and his movement became an attractive source of legitimacy that other Arab rulers, by joining in, sought to gain political capital from.21 The Egypt-Saudi-Arabia Axis: Protectors of the Regional Order Since the 1950s Egypt and Saudi-Arabia have been contenders for regional ­influence, Egypt representing the secular republics, Saudi-Arabia the conservative monarchies of the Gulf and Jordan. In the 1960s the two countries were 19

Raymond Hinnebusch, Syria: Revolution from Above (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 41–43. 20 Hinnebusch, Syria, 42. 21 For a summary of the main characteristics of this regime model, see Roel Meijer, “Political Citizenship and Social Movements in the Arab World,” in Handbook of Political Citizenship and Social Movements, ed. Hein Anton Van der Heijden (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publisher, 2014), 639–640.

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fighting a drawn-out proxy war over Yemen between republicans and royalists which ended in 1967 without a clear-cut victory. But this “Nasser’s ­Vietnam” cost Egypt about 15000 casualties, a drain on its economy, and damaging ­Nasser’s image as the Arab unifier.22 Later, the two countries were basically on the same side in regional conflicts, starting with Egypt joining the camp of pro-Western Arab states after the death of Nasser in 1971. This major shift in the strategic balance was dramatically exposed when the new Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat announced the expulsion of Soviet military advisors in July 1972, re-orienting Egypt towards the usa. In the wars over Iraq, from the IranIraq war 1980–1988, the two countries supported Iraq against what they saw as a threat from Iran following the Islamic revolution in 1979. In fact, the origin of the Egypt-Saudi-Arabia alliance against internal and external enemies and in support of the regional status quo is to be found in the Arab summit in Khartoum in August 1967, still in the aftershocks of the Six-Day War that year. Here the radical republics (lead by Egypt) and the conservative monarchies (lead by Saudi-Arabia) reached a “gentlemen’s agreement”: The republics would give up all attempts at toppling the monarchs, whereas the oil-rich monarchs on their side pledged to finance to rebuilding of the military infrastructure of the front-line states (vis-a-vis Israel). Paul Jabber has cogently explained this dynamic, still very much at work today: The essence of the “special relationship” between Egypt and SaudiArabia, which had its gestation at the Khartoum Arab Summit of August 1967, gradually developed in the interwar period from 1967 to 1973, and which reached full maturity following the October [War] … consisted [of] a trade-off of mutual expectations between Cairo and Riyadh. … Egypt … henceforth expected substantial and continuing access to the growing riches of the oil states. In exchange, a Saudi regime acutely ­conscious of its multifaceted vulnerability, and for years under ideological, political and even military attack by the “radical-revolutionary” camp now looked forward to, indeed demanded, relief from such pressures. It expected from Cairo … abandonment of revolutionary confrontation, supra-national appeals, and unduly close ties to the Communist world,

22

In addition, it made Egypt ill-prepared for the escalating conflict with Israel; its weakness dramatically exposed in the Six-Day War. See Jesse Ferris, Nasser’s Gamble: How Intervention in Yemen Caused the Six-Day War and the Decline of Egyptian Power (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), 5–15.

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the promotion of socialism with the Arab World and other such policies and practices subversive of the status quo.23 More recently, the cleavages and alliances in the region are very different from the height of Pan-Arab nationalism, but the patterns of regimes seeking c­ ollusion with or support from regional partners to compensate for lack of legitimacy or other weaknesses persists. No Arab regime or coalition today balances the Saudi-Egypt axis: Iraq, Syria and Libya are failed states, Algeria is keeping itself outside the conflict but is supportive of the al-Sisi regime in Egypt; most of the monarchies are either on the side of Saudi-Arabia or neutral. Sudan now follows Saudi-Arabia as a regional leader. In the wake of the Arab Uprisings this pattern is particularly evident along three partly overlapping cleavages: The Sunni/Shiʿi divide, the Saudi-Arabia/ Iran rivalry, and the question of the political legitimacy of the Muslim Brotherhood. As conflicts have unfolded along all three cleavages, Saudi-Arabia’s role as a dominant player in the Arab context is a striking factor. Most o­ bservers agree that what drives this conflict is the underlying rivalry between Iran and SaudiArabia for regional dominance, a rivalry that to a large extent overlaps with the Sunni/Shiʿi cleavage. Followers of Shiʾism comprise only a small ­minority of about 10 per cent in the Muslim world, but with the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran (the only country with a 90 per cent majority of Shiʿi ­Muslims) Shiʿis got a powerful religious and political centre with ambitions; as seen from the Arab heartland Iran had become an expansionist threat. The threat was not only from a religious competitor, but from the centre of a radical anti-American mobilising movement with sympathisers all over the region that in many ways had inherited the role from the outdated and unsuccessful left-wing secular Arab nationalists. Not since the Nasserists, Communists and Baʿathists had threatened the conservative Arab regimes back in the 1960’s and 70’s had a mass-movement of such substantial proportions emerged in the r­ egion, now even in religious garments. Within a few years the sectarian cleavage between Sunnis and Shias became politically relevant and potent. After the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 (notably replaced by a Shiʿi-dominated government), Asad’s s­ trategic 23

Paul Jabber, “Oil, Arms, and Regional Diplomacy: Strategic Dimensions of the SaudiEgyptian Relationship,” in Rich and Poor States in the Middle East: Egypt and the New Arab Order, ed. Malcolm H. Kerr and El Sayed Yassin (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1982), 430. See also Dan Tschirgi, “The United States, the Arab World, and the Gulf Crisis,” in Perspectives on the Gulf Crisis, ed. Dan Tschirgi and Bassam Tibi (Cairo: Cairo Papers in Social Science, No. 14, 1991), 16–18.

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o­rientation towards Iran, and the building up in Lebanon of Hezbollah (a  Shia  militia, now the strongest military power in Lebanon) supported by both Syria and Iran, many Arab leaders (Jordan’s Abdullah ii in 2004 followed by Mubarak in Egypt and others) warned of the formation of a “Shiʿa Axis” or “Shiʿa Crescent” in the Mashreq, controlled by Teheran and running from Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut, later to be added by the Houthi rebels in Yemen. As explained by Bjørn Olav Utvik: What, then, is behind the scaremongering from some Arab capitals? At one level it reflects a fear of the growth of internal opposition, more often than not led by Islamists. Movements like Hezbollah and Hamas are seen as exerting a dangerous influence in that they galvanise oppositional elements into believing that change is possible. Through their defiant stance against Israel they also throw into stark relief the inability and unwillingness of most Arab governments to act in defence of the Palestinian cause. By portraying these movements as mere tools in the hands of an expansionist non-Arab and non-Sunni Iran the governments hope to undermine the popular legitimacy of the Islamists.24 One clear indication that the Saudi-Arabia-Iran conflict is less about religious doctrine than a struggle over regional power and citizenship regimes is the fact that the Palestinian Sunni Hamas movement is often included in the Iranianled axis. Also, the Asad regime in Syria is hardly straight-forward Shia: The ­regime is secular, the Alawites who holds leading positions in the regime is traditionally considered as heretics by the Shia clergy, and the President himself is married to a Sunni. Furthermore, the claim that strategic like-mindedness among Middle Eastern regimes are primarily formed in the matrix of powerrelations and not by religious or ideological like-mindedness was bluntly demonstrated when Saudi-Arabia (and its Salafi supporters in Egypt) promptly expressed its full support to al-Sisiʾs coup d’état against President Muhammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. In the post-Arab Spring era Saudi-Arabia and Egypt, supported by United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and others, are united in their attempts to wipe out the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood from political influence in the region. The Brotherhood’s show of strength as the most popular political party in the relatively free and fair elections in Egypt after the fall of President Mubarak, followed by similar results in Tunisia and Morocco, was a wake-up call for the autocratic regimes, fearful as they are of the public 24

Bjørn Olav Utvik, “The Fear of a Shia Axis,” forskning (April 10, 2010), http://forskning .no/content/fear-shia-axis, accessed January 20, 2015.

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appeal of the Brotherhood’s anti-regime policies. When al-Sisi was safely in power, Saudi-Arabia and its closest allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council25 pledged tens of billions of dollars in support to the new-old Egyptian regime to stabilise the autocratic regime and help al-Sisi out of the huge economic problems Egypt was facing.26 The geopolitical rivalry between Saudi-Arabia and Iran is the overriding general tendency that defines alliances in the region today and hence having deep influences on models of citizenship in individual countries; every state and all major players have to orient themselves according to this rivalry. Both regional powers now intervene directly or indirectly in a number of states (Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Lebanon) in order to impact the outcome of the power-struggles in these countries. This room for active regional rivalry has been made possible to a large extent by the failed us wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the break-down of several states that followed, combined with the partial retreat of the us from the region and the weakening of Egypt as a regional power in the post-Arab Spring years. The war against isil (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) furthermore demonstrates how regional alliances emerge and are re-organised when state authorities are broken down. In both Syria and Iraq the regimes have failed to gain support from the leaders of large Sunni tribes that live on both sides of the state boundaries, threatening the integrity of both states and provoking interventions, it seems, by stakeholders at all levels and from all corners of the world. To sum up, rulers and regimes with a fragile support-base in society seek to compensate for this weakness not only by exploiting neopatrmonial r­ elations 25

26

The Gulf Cooperation Council (gcc) consists of six monarchies: Saudi-Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates (uae), Bahrain, and Oman. Saudi-Arabia has however not been able to forge consensus within the gcc on relations to either Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood. Whereas Bahrain (whose rulers were saved by Saudi military intervention in 2011) and uae are loyal to Saudi-Arabia, the other members follow a more independent line to a varying degree. Qatar had close relations with the Muslim Brotherhood, but had to change its position under heavy pressures from Saudi-Arabia. According to Al Arabiya English, within two years of General al-Sisiʾs coup d’état, the gcc countries had strengthened Egypt’s economy with a total of about 35.5 billion dollars: They offered 12.5 billion dollars in aid and investments at a conference to enhance investments in Egypt’s economy in March 2015. In addition, “Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the uae, which backed the al-Sisi-led army overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July 2013 following mass unrest against his rule, have kept Egypt’s economy afloat since then with 23 billion dollars in oil shipments, cash grants and central bank deposits.” http:// english.alarabiya.net/en/business/economy/2015/03/13/Saudi-announces-4-billion-aid -package-to-Egypt.html, accessed November 18, 2015.

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at home (the first leg of the “iron triangle”), but also by pragmatically entering strategic alliances on the regional level as a shield against any threat. Today, a “Saudi-Egypt Axis” supported by client actors throughout the region forms the core of the second dimension in the “iron triangle” that restricts the freedom of citizens. This alliance is organised with the purpose of keeping “de-­stabilising” and “terrorist” elements and their sponsors in the region at bay at any costs. State-directed violence and political misuse of legal institutions against ­political opposition and human rights defenders and organisations, i­ ncluding political movements representing major political trends in society, has caused the suppression of open discourse, and as it seems, the re-instating of the “wall of fear”27 in people’s mind. The coming of a society based on solidarity across religious and ethnic cleavages and a “Rebirth of the Arab Citizen,” both important motives in the Arab Uprisings, have become distant dreams.

The Third Leg of the “Iron Triangle”: The Collusion between Global Powers and Local Rulers

The fragile foundations of many Arab states are an endemic challenge to political stability in the Middle East. Combined with its strategic location – involving vital interests not only for regional powers, but for great powers as well – the region unavoidably becomes an arena for rivalries between powers and actors on all levels, from tribal leaders to superpowers, creating complex p ­ atterns of dependencies and inter-dependencies. External powers need bridgeheads in the region: Access to territory, strategic resources, clients, markets; local rulers need security guarantees and political, economic, and diplomatic sponsoring to compensate for lack of legitimacy among own citizens and to mend fences against local and regional challengers. This pattern of interaction between global and local actors, strongly entrenched in the colonial history of the ­region, resembles in many ways the kind of neopatrimonialism described earlier, and constitute the third leg in our “iron triangle.” But how does this third dimension impact on the conditions of citizenship in the region? 27

This expression was often used to describe the absence of fear and the civil courage that characterised the demonstrators; they had teared down the “wall of fear” in their own mind, aware of the brutal methods used by the different security and police forces, and the miserable conditions and use of torture in most prisons. In fact, it is fair to say that the breaking down of this “wall” was a prerequisite for the scale of the demonstrations. See for example, Nasser Weddady and Sohrab Ahmar (eds), Arab Spring Dreams: The Next Generation Speaks Out for Freedom and Justice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 47.

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First, priorities are set and deals made in direct negotiations between global and local actors within a patron-client structure, excluding citizens at large from any democratic impact or monitoring. Such arrangements work well in conjunction with dynastic and pre-democratic systems, and contribute to preserve them, inhibiting dynamic renewal of political leadership. It is a fair assumption that the remarkable tendencies of the once revolutionary and ­anti-monarchical Arab republics of becoming semi-monarchical dynasties can be explained, at least in part, with reference to this pattern of interaction.28 As seen from an outside power with vital interests to defend in the region, it would be preferable to do business with a single ruler who you can trust as a loyal partner (maybe because he is dependent on your economic or security guarantees) and who can make decisions on his own without having to bother too much about public opinion, organised opposition or ineffective political institutions. Second, again for historical reasons and because of the extreme imbalance of power between global powers and local actors, the threshold for external interference or intervention, including military, is relatively low. It is as if global powers, for the most time Western powers, consider intervening in the region as justified, given their perceptions (or prejudices) of the region as ruled by weak and unpredictable leaders and where their own vital interests could be at stake. But again, it is not only global powers who want to intervene in the region, it is as much local actors seeking intervention from external powers when they feel threatened. This kind of reciprocity is the core logic of the third leg of the iron triangle, creating stumbling blocks in the way of developing democratic citizenship regimes. The ways in which local ruling elites can exploit the readiness (relatively speaking) of global powers to intervene in the region is illustrated by numerous episodes in modern and contemporary history. Events in the dramatic year 1958 involving Lebanon and Trans-Jordan, and relations between the United States and the gcc countries in the current era, can serve as examples. Saved by the Eisenhower Doctrine At the peak of Arab nationalism in the aftermath of the Suez War in 1956 the  pressure against Arab regimes and conservative forces considered by the nationalists to stand in the way for a wider Arab revolution and unity 28

Larbi Sadiki, Like Father, Like Son: Dynastic Republicanism in the Middle East (Carnegie Endowment for International peace, Policy Outlook, 2009), http://carnegieendowment .org/files/dynastic_republicanism.pdf. Accessed November 10, 2015.

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was immense. The fall of the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq in July 1958 and establishment of a nationalist republic combined with the abandonment of the pro-­Western Baghdad Pact raised expectations for an all-out radical ­Pan-­Arab victory even further. Two leaders particularly at risk to be swallowed by the surge at the same time was the Lebanese conservative strongman ­President Chamille Chamoun and King Hussein of the Hashemite Kingdom of ­Trans-Jordan. When an escalating pro-Nasser revolt with the epicentre in the city of Sidon threatened to overthrow Chamoun he had no regional partners to ask for help, and turned to usa with a request for help under the Eisenhower Doctrine.29 Eisenhower responded positively and promptly and sent the ­marines to Beirut, saving Chamoun’s pro-Western government. At the same time, fearful of what had just happened to Faisal ii (son of his second cousin) in Iraq, King Hussein appealed to Washington and London for military assistance against the Nasserists. Kamal Salibi explains: “Washington was reluctant to undertake the defence of President Chamoun and King Hussein simultaneously. The solution was to detail the defence of Jordan to the British, who still felt morally committed to the Hashemite regime in Amman. The British military airlift to Jordan, like the American oil lift shortly before, could arrive only by flying over Israeli airspace.”30 The United States as a Protective Shield Since the end of the Cold War and the bipolar world, the East–west rivalry is no longer an organising dimension in the regional security arrangements. But the fragility of many regimes persists, and thus their need for external security guarantees. In the case of the smaller monarchies in the Gulf sub-region their needs for security have been partly met within the Gulf Cooperation Council with Saudi-Arabia as the dominating partner, but only partly. As discussed above, challenges from within (Shia minorities, Muslim Brotherhood, jihadist groups) and from outside (Iran) are of major concerns to most of the rulers; challenges that cannot be handled only on the regional level. Until recently, 29

30

The Eisenhower Doctrine from 1957 was a major American policy statement of the Cold War era identifying us strategic aims and interests in the Middle East vis-à-vis the Soviet bloc. Under the Doctrine, approved by the Congress in March 1957, the us President could authorise the commitment of u.s. forces “to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid against overt armed ­aggression from any nation controlled by international communism.” Kamal Salibi, The Modern History of Jordan (London and New York: i.b. Tauris, 1993), 202. The required official approval of the Israeli government was given in both instanced, ­indicating Israel’s interest in keeping the Hashemite Kingdom.

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the gcc countries felt confident that the well-established us guarantees were solid, given the central role of the Gulf in American strategies for the Greater Middle East, us dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and the enmity between usa and Iran, Saudi-Arabia’s main contender for regional power. Considering the us massive military presence in the Gulf monarchies, the gcc leaders should have good reasons to feel protected by the American military umbrella, but also reasons to keep it for the future. As explained by Gregory Gause, “[F]or better or worse, the Gulf monarchies are now America’s closest allies in the Arab world. The u.s. military infrastructure in the region is centered on bases in these states.”31 However, especially since the start of President Obama’s second term in 2013, it has been evident that the factors that motivates the us commitments no more can be taken for granted: Obama is struggling to reduce the American presence in the Greater Middle East, shifting us strategic attention towards the Far East; us dependence on oil imports from the Middle East is increasingly being reduced; and the Obama administration has had a clear policy of reducing tensions with Iran, with the aim of reaching a diplomatic deal over the ­controversial issue of Iran’s nuclear programme, and dismantling the ­sanctions regime.32 The combined effects of these policies have shaken the Gulf rulers’ confidence in the robustness of the us security guarantees which in fact is not only guarantees against military attacks, but also vital protection of their archaic citizenship regimes. With Iraq out of the equation as a buffer against Iranian dominance and statements by Obama to the effect that the greatest security threat for the Gulf monarchies is not Iran, but their own lack of democracy,33 motivated the gcc leaders to demand a meeting with President Obama in May 2015. They wanted reassurances of American security guarantees in the form of

31

32

33

F. Gregory Gause iii, “Understanding the Gulf States. Why the Monarchies of the Persian Gulf Fall Out and Get Back Together – and Why it Matters for the Region and the World,” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas 36 (2015), http://democracyjournal.org/magazine/36/­ understanding-the-gulf-states/, accessed December 15, 2015. This was achieved in stages in 2015, in spite of fierce resistance from the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Republican Party in the us, Saudi-Arabia and its closest allies, and hardliners in Iran. Most of the sanctions were lifted in January 2016 after confirmation by the iaea (International Atomic Energy Agency) that Iran had fulfilled its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Tom Hussein, “Persian Gulf nations unlikely to embrace democracy despite Obama push,” McClatchyDC, May 12, 2015, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/ middle-east/article24784417.html, accessed December 15, 2015.

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some kind of written agreement, preferably a formal defence pact, and promises of advanced military hardware.34 Conclusion These few examples demonstrate that the conditions of citizenship in the mena region are not based on a secure environment of well-established states. On the contrary, we are dealing with a region of core significance in world politics where fundamental aspects of political order and regime legitimacy and stability are under constant challenges, both from actors within the territorial states and from the outside. There are potentials for major changes, as we saw during the Arab Spring, but today a bleak picture is what comes through in most of the region: The stability obtained is mostly of the Machiavelli kind because of the basic lack of trust, rulers and warlords are bound to play cynical survival games within the matrix of power that they are thrown into. Thus, if we want a comprehensive understanding of the conditions of citizenship in the Arab region today, we must disentangle the political dynamics of the “iron triangle” that limit the realisation of active citizenship. We might be lead to conclude, then, that the struggle by the masses for their citizenship rights in 2011 was to no avail given the overwhelming counter-forces. The authoritarian rulers have reasserted their grip on society. What does this experience do to peoples’ trust, not only in democracy as a basis for good governance, but also to their own self-respect as citizens? Is a struggle for their basic rights, ­risking brutal repression, worthwhile considering that the chances for success are negligible? However, in a broader historical perspective, the “uprisings,” the “awakening,” the “Spring,” the “revolution” of 2011, was a forceful reality and might still be considered as a “critical juncture”35 in in the modern political history of the region. The uprisings demonstrated that it is possible for citizens, even under conditions of autocratic governance and brutal repression, to bring the ­political regime to its knees and break up the “iron triangle” that normally ­restricts them from exercising citizenship rights. The events of 2011 inserted 34 The gcc leaders did get promises of increased military aid, short of weapons that could challenge us commitments to Israel’s military edge over the Arabs, but did not get any kind of formal defence pact. See “Obama Pledges More Military Aid to Reassure Persian Gulf Allies on Iran Deal,” The New York Times 14 May 2015, http://www.nytimes .com/2015/05/15/world/middleeast/obama-saudi-arabia-iran-persian-gulf-security .html?_r=0, accessed December 15, 2015. 35 See Nils A. Butenschøn, “Arab Citizen and the Arab State: The ‘Arab Spring’ as a Critical Juncture in Contemporary Arab Politics,” Democracy and Security 11 (2015): 111–128.

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a new dimension in Arab politics that leaders are forced to consider: citizens are more aware of their rights and their potential powers to enforce change if their basic rights are violated and their dignity as citizens trampled down. The uprisings did not revolutionise the Arab political order, but as a ruler you never know when the people will rise again and challenge your authority. The seeds of the uprisings may blossom in the form of democratic transitions at a later stage, not very different from the historic significance of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, a parallel that has been mentioned by several observers. With reference to that debate Anne Applebaum writes: “Historian A.J.P. Taylor once called 1848 a moment when ‘history reached a turning point and failed to turn.’ And yet – in the longer run, the ideas discussed in 1848 did seep into the culture, and some of the revolutionary plans of 1848 were eventually realized.”36 Bibliography Al Arabiya News. “Gulf states offer $12.5 billion aid to Egypt.” http://english.alarabiya .net/en/business/economy/2015/03/13/Saudi-announces-4-billion-aid-package-to -Egypt.html. Accessed March 3, 2015. Applebaum, Anne. “Every Revolution is Different: The Arab Uprisings of 2011 Are Like the European Revolutions of 1848 – Complicated and Messy.” Slate. February 21, 2011, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2011/02/every _revolution_is_different.html. Accessed November 20, 2015. Ayubi, Nazih N. Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East. ­London: I.B. Tauris, 1995. Brumberg, Daniel. “The Trap of Liberalised Autocracy.” Journal of Democracy 13 (2011): 56–68. Butenschøn, Nils A. “State, Power, and Citizenship in the Middle East: A Theoretical Introduction.” In Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and A ­ pplications, edited by Nils A. Butenschøn, Uri Davis, and Manuel Hassassian, 3–27. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Butenschøn, Nils A. “Arab Citizen and the Arab State: The ‘Arab Spring’ as a Critical Juncture in Contemporary Arab Politics.” Democracy and Security 11 (2015): 111–128. Davis, Julie Hirschfeld and David E. Sanger. “Obama Pledges More Military Aid to ­Reassure Persian Gulf Allies on Iran.” The New York Times 20, May 14, 2015, 36

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Khalaf, Samir. Lebanon’s Predicament. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Khazen, Farid El. The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon, 1967–1976. London: I.B. Tauris, 2000. Khazziha, Walid. “The impact of Palestine on Arab Politics.” In The Arab State, edited By Giacomo Luciani, 300–318. London: Routledge, 1990. Tsai, Kellee S. Capitalism Without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary C ­ hina. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007. Korany, Bahgat. “Alien and Besieged Yet Here to Stay: The Contradictions of the Arab Territorial State.” In The Foundations of the Arab State, edited by Ghassan Salamé, 47–74. London: Croom Helm, 1987. Laqueur, Walter Z. (ed.). The Middle East in Transition: Studies in Contemporary History. London: Routlege & Kegan Paul, 1958. Lerner, Daniel. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York: Free Press, 1958. Luciani, Giacomo, ed. The Arab State. London: Routledge, 1990. Lunch, Marc. “The Big Think behind the Arab Spring: Do the Middle East’s Revolutions Have a Unifying Ideology?” Foreign Policy. November 28, 2011. Meijer, Roel. “Political Citizenship and Social Movements in the Arab World.” In ­Handbook of Political Citizenship and Social Movements, edited by Hein Anton Van der Heijden, 628–660. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publisher, 2014. Nathan, Andrew J. “Authoritarian Resilience,” Journal of Democracy 14 (2003): 6–17. Picard, Elizabeth. “Arab Military in Politics: from Revolutionary Plot to Authoritarian State.” In The Arab State, edited by Giacomo Luciani, 189–219. London: Routledge, 1990. Sadiki, Larbi. Like Father, Like Son: Dynastic Republicanism in the Middle East, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Policy Outlook, 2009. http://carnegieendow ment.org/files/dynastic_republicanism.pdf. accessed November 3, 2015. Salamé, Ghassan. The Foundations of the Arab State. London and New York: Croom Helm, 1987. Salibi, Kamal. The Modern History of Jordan. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1993. Schlumberger, Oliver (ed.), Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes. Stanford: Stanford University Press 2007. Tschirgi, Dan. “The United States, the Arab World, and the Gulf Crisis.” In Perspectives on the Gulf Crisis, edited by Dan Tschirgi and Bassam Tibi, 3–69. Cairo: Cairo Papers in Social Science, 14 , American University in Cairo Press, 1991. Utvik, Bjørn Olav, “The Fear of a Shia Axis,” forskning.no April 10, 2010. http://forskning .no/content/fear-shia-axis. Accessed November 3, 2015. Weddady, Nasser and Sohrab Ahmari (eds.). Arab Spring Dreams: The Next Generation Speaks Out for Freedom and Justice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2012.

part 2 Concepts of Citizenship

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chapter 10

Muslim Subjects and the Rights of God Knut S. Vikør The often repeated phrase that “Islam does not distinguish between religion and politics,” expressed in the slogan al-islam din wa-dawla, “Islam is faith and state,” can evidently not be taken literally. If Muslims did not distinguish between din and dawla, they could not claim that Islam should be both. It is of course a political demand, first expressed at the end of the nineteenth century,1 for greater religious impact on politics than was the case at that time. A contrary argument would be that political authority in Islam has since the death of the Prophet been basically secular, in that the religious scholars far from taking a political role always considered the profession of politics as a sordid business, inherently oppressive both for the faith and the believers, and to be avoided at all costs. Both views are however programmatic and normative. While anecdotes abound of pious scholars spurning the praise of the sultans and rejecting the “blood-soaked money” that was offered by them,2 all indications are that reallife scholars not only avidly sought the favour of the state, but often depended on it for their livelihood.3 The historical reality shows a close and ­co-­dependent relation between the authorities of religion and of the state. Nevertheless, they were separate. Islam does not have any organised “church” or ecclesiastic hierarchy,4 but the ruler-caliph did not step into role as a “pope” or religious leader of Islam, nor did anyone else.5 1 Nazih N. Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World (London: Routledge, 1994), 123. 2 Tilman Nagel, Das islamische Recht: Eine Einführung (Westhofen: WVA-Verlag Skulima, 2001), 117. 3 Mathieu Tillier, Les Cadis d’Iraq et l’état abbasside (132/750–334/945) (Damascus: ifpo, 2009), 225–274. 4 At least not in the majority Sunni Islam, Shiʿism did from the eighteenth century develop a religious hierarchy, up to the level of “great ayatollah,” and also had a conception of divinely inspired imam who had religious authority unknown to Sunnism. 5 Ira M. Lapidus, “The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early Islamic society,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (1975): 363–385, and criticism by Muhammad Qasim Zaman, “The Caliphs, the ʿUlamāʾ, and the Law: Defining the Role and Function of the Caliph in the Early ʿAbbāsid Period,” Islamic Law and Society 4 (1997): 1–36. See also

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The complex interaction of the divine and the mundane raises the issue of the relations between the political authority and the believers, the ʿibad or subjects of the Muslim state. The traditional Orientalist view of the caliph or sultan was that of an unrestrained despot who, applauded by the religious scholars or not, ruled over docile subjects according to his personal whim with only lip service paid to empty religious ethic. In the courts, the judges, qadis, appointed by the ruler, similarly dispensed justice according to their own inclinations, while the formalistic rules of the Shariʿa remained an ignored and ossified text which had little or no impact on actual jurisprudence, an “ivory tower” in the image made by Max Weber.6 Modern studies on the practices of Islamic law in the pre-modern period has mostly dispelled this image of the self-centred “kadi under the tree,” and shown that qadis in fact largely followed the rules of the Shariʿa, and that these were flexible enough to allow for considerable adaptation to changing circumstances.7 However, the issue of the relation between ruler and ruled in premodern Islam has not been fully developed yet. Did traditional Islamic society have anything that could resemble the idea of “citizen,” a person who had independent and predictable rights towards the state and the ruler, or did Islam sanction the arbitrary rule of whoever was in power? Was there anything that could be called “rule of law,” a Rechtsstaat, in the classical Islamic state? It must be clear from the outset that modern conceptions of a state based on popular sovereignty, and of “citizens” as equal individuals before the law are anachronistic to the Muslim medieval period and we cannot hope to find such in the form known to us. It was self-evident to the scholars, and probably also to the population of the time, that different categories of people had different status, such as between men and women, free and slave, and Muslim and non-Muslim, and that these statuses were reflected in their legal and political rights. Social differences could also play a role, but the main legal categorisations were those three; gender, freedom and religion. Thus, if we are to explore the relation between ruler and ruled, we have to look for specific aspects and how they were conceived. One is the issue of rights. Who possessed rights in society, and based on what? The other is the Neil J. Coulson, “The State and the Individual in Islamic Law,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 4 (1957): 49–60. 6 Bryan S. Turner, Weber and Islam: A Critical Study(London: Routledge, 1978), 107–121. 7 Knut S. Vikør, Between God and the Sultan: A History of Islamic Law (London: Hurst 2005), 7–8. On the functions of the qadi, see Dispensing Justice in Islam: Qadis and their Judgements, ed. Muhammad Khalid Masud, Rudolph Peters, and David S. Powers (Leiden: e.j. Brill, 2006), in particular the editors’ introduction, 1–44.

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l­egitimacy of the ruler, why does a ruler have licence to rule, and what limits can be placed on him by society? And if we translate Rechtsstaat into the English term “rule of law,” were laws and court judgments predictable and placed such limitations on the judges that the “criminal could know in advance” how the court would handle a transgression?8 When we look for answers to these question, we are also faced with the issue of what the sources tell us: are they describing the norms of how a good ruler should behave, or an actual historical reality? Muslim sources of early history very often blend the descriptive and the normative so it is difficult to separate the two. We must therefore try to involve both levels in our analysis, the ideology as presented by the scholars, and what we may glean from other sources of how that ideology was put into practice.

The Rights of God and the Rights of Man

The concept of “rights” in Islamic thought, huquq (sing. haqq), is divided into huquq Allah, the rights of God, and huquq al-ʿibad, the rights of men (worshippers).9 However, the former term is theologically problematic, since God cannot strictly speaking be said to need any “rights” – he is the Creator, and does not get into a one-to-one relationship with his own creation to claim any rights over what he himself made. Thus God’s rights are not rights for God, but rights in relation to God’s intentions for his creation, the maqasid, which is traditionally defined as the “welfare” of the society and the believers (masalih).10 God’s rights are thus best seen as communal rights, the rights of 8

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“Rule of law” may of course include a much wider specter of conditions, such as fairness and justice, according to the norms of the time, or to universal norms defined today, but in this connection we are focused on limitations on political and judicial power which the subject might exercise. On “rule of law,” see e.g. Tom Bingham, The Rule of Law (London: Penguin, 2011). Baber Johansen, “Secular and Religious Elements in Hanafite Law: Function and Limits of the Absolute Character of Government Authority,” in Baber Johansen, Contingency in a Sacred Law (Leiden: e.j. Brill, 1999), 189–218 and 60–104; Baber Johansen, “The Claims of Men and the Claims of God: The Limits of Government Authority in Hanafite Law,” Pluriformiteit en verdeling van de macht in het Midden-Oosten (Nijmegen: moi, 1980), 60–104; Bernard G. Weiss, The Spirit of Islamic Law (Athens, ga: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 182–184; Anver M. Emon, “Ḥuqūq Allāh and Ḥuqūq al-ʿIbād: A Legal Heuristic for a Natural Rights Regime,” Islamic Law and Society 13 (2006): 325–391 . Felicitas Opwis, “Islamic Law and Legal Change: The Concept of Maslaha in Classical and Contemporary Islamic Legal Theory,” in Shariʿa: Islamic Law in the Contemporary Context,

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the Muslim society for a good life, while the huquq al-ʿibad are the rights each ­individual has against others. In law, they have some similarity to the distinction between “public law” (the individual’s relation to society) and “private law” (inter-personal relations) respectively, although the two terms do not translate precisely into Shariʿa jurisprudence. Generally, the hudud crimes (sing. hadd)11 are considered to be expressions of huquq Allah, since they are based on specific prescriptions in God’s revelation – the definition of a hadd crime is that the punishment is specified in the Qurʾan – and they are not there to right the wrongs made against any specific individual, but against society as a whole. The difference can be seen in the jurists’ discussion of the case where a criminal is accused of a combination of crimes, one relating to huquq al-ʿibad, and one relating to huquq Allah, for which the punishments conflict. God has in his mercy the right to forgo his rights under huquq Allah, thus Islamic jurisprudence says that, following a prescription in the Qurʾan, hudud punishments should not be carried out if there is any doubt about the guilt of the accused. But this does not apply to the huquq al-ʿibad, where an individual has a claim against another that he has the right to have settled. Since the individual has a stronger right to redress than God (who does not need redress for himself), in such a conflict the nine huquq al-ʿibad will trump the rights of God.12 An example is if a man confesses to the crime of adultery, while the woman denies this, and there is no further evidence to substantiate the man’s claim. In that case, the woman cannot be punished for lack of evidence, while the man has transgressed against two hudud rules: that of fornication (proved for him, but not for the woman, by his confession), and that of charging the woman with adultery without sufficient proof (qadhf, punishable by 80 lashes). M ­ uslim jurists agree that due to the doubt, the punishment for adultery cannot be carried out for the man either, in spite of his confession, adultery being a haqq Allah. However, they disagree on whether that means that the charge of his slander against the woman must also fall. Some say yes, since the two charges fall under the same act. Others, however, say that qadhf slander is not a right of God, but the right of this particular woman not to have her name besmirched.

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ed. Abbas Amanat and Frank Griffel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 66–71; and Opwis, Maṣlaḥa and the Purpose of the Law: Islamic Discourse on Legal Change from the 4th/10th to 8th/14th Century (Leiden: e.j. Brill, 2010). Theft, highway robbery or rebellion (hiraba), drinking alcohol, fornication, as well as false accusation of fornication (see below. Some schools also include apostasy.) Murder and bodily harm also have specific sanctions, but are not covered by the hudud and are considered private claims (huquq ʿibad) of the victim against the perpetrator; Vikør, Between God and the Sultan, 282–287. Emon, “Ḥuqūq Allāh,” 337–358.

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Thus, qadhf, even though it is one of the hudud punishments, is in fact a haqq al-ʿibad, an individual right of the woman, and cannot be pardoned by God (society). It trumps the rights of God, and the man must be punished for his implied charge against the woman, but not for the adultery he confessed.

Rights against the Ruler

When it comes to describing the nature of legitimate rule, there is a wide difference between the most normative descriptions, which as far as possible see the legitimate leader of the umma, the imam,13 as the archetypical just ruler fully versed in the Revelation and able to draw independent legal rules from them in the manner of the Rightly-guided caliphs, and on the other hand the acceptance that this ideal is impossible in these latter days, and that even the first caliphs sought help from the more knowledgeable of the Revelation (i.e. the scholars). This theoretical scholar-imam was thus an archetype in the same way that the Friday prayer was built on the now impossible conception of the umma, all the world’s Muslims, gathered in one mosque for a prayer lead by this caliph-imam. Thus, religious and jurisprudential capacity resided instead with the class of scholars, who were then the wurathaʾ al-nabi, the heirs of the Prophet in the sense of repositories of knowledge about and understanding of the Revelation and its law.14 This reality was acknowledged by the early ninth century at the latest, but the theoreticians of caliphal legitimacy continued to describe the ideal imam-mujtahid for centuries after this, only grudgingly recognising the unreality of their description. This realisation, then, engendered an opposite mythology, that of the sharp conflict between the mundane caliph and the free spirits of the ʿulama. The main topos of this discourse was money. Islamic law came to recognise only a few select categories of taxes, such as zakat, jizya, kharaj, ʿushr. Clearly, the caliph collected taxes far beyond these religiously sanctioned kinds, and he spent what he collected in ways not detailed in the law. These taxes were therefore by definition oppressive, and by accepting any financial remuneration from 13

14

While the Shiʿi current places the imam in an specific, esoteric, position, the Sunni scholars also use the term imam for the worldly political leader of the umma while “caliph” was and is common for the person filling this position in historical reality. Here, the term imam may thus be understood as synonymous with caliph. In the following, “sultan” is used as a general term for a ruler, irrespective of actual title. Roy Mottahedeh, “Wilayat al-faqih,” in Vol. 2 of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and P­ olitics, ed. Emad El-Din Shahin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 543.

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the caliph, the scholar was also tainted. We find such conflicts described in the praise-filled biographies of religious scholars at least from the eighth century onwards.15 However, as we have seen, closer inspection shows that this was already by this time in contrast to common reality. Some scholars did have subsistence from private income, donations, or side activities as traders or other professions, but many depended in reality on their positions as stateappointed judges or other judicial or administrative posts, and were more than relieved to be “forced” to take up such appointments. This then laid the basis for the complex relation between the state, the caliph, sultan and their locally appointed governors, and the religious scholars. The latter did not rely on any state authorisation of their scholarly status. Financially, the most common basis for their livelihood were donations such as waqfs, endowments set up for mosques, schools, and scholars attached to them.16 Such waqfs were established by wealthy private individuals, they could also be made by state officials, but once given could not be recalled and ensured an independence to the scholars. However, many also relied on appointments to courts as qadis or other public offices, which the ruler could freely and easily take away. Thus religious scholars could take on a role as representatives of society against a ruler, even lead local protests and revolts, but a qadi who showed too much independence could expect to lose his job.17 This integration was probably an important reason why many Sunni scholars came to agree that political chaos is worse than oppressive rule, and that it was not justified to rebel against even an unjust ruler, provided he did not transgress such borders as threatened Islam.18 These borders were normally described as the “five necessities.” The maqasid, the intentions of the Islamic law and rule, was to protect the believers’ religion, life, intellect, lineage and property.19 A ruler who no longer did that had lost his legitimacy. This raises then the question of the relation of the ruler to the huquq Allah, which we must then translate as “the rights of society.” In one sense, the ruler and his state were the defenders of the huquq Allah. If the rights of society 15 Tillier, Les Cadis d’Iraq, 228–229 and 661–675; also Tillier, “Judicial Authority and Qāḍīs’ Autonomy under the ʿAbbāsids,” al-Masāq 24 (2014), 2: 119–131. 16 Pascale Ghazaleh (ed.), Held in Trust: Waqf in the Islamic World (Cairo: The American ­University in Cairo Press, 2011). 17 While a local community could also successfully petition the ruler to dismiss a qadi who they considered inept or unjust. 18 Antony Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), 37–38. 19 Opwis, “Islamic Law and Legal Change,” 66.

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were violated, then society must respond, and the imam is the leader and agent of society. But he was so only in so far as these rights were fulfilled. Thus, by extension, the huquq Allah did also bind the ruler, and in particular in relation to the “five necessities.” And it was the religious, and in particular the legal scholars, the fuqaha who here represented the interests of society over the ruler, and could in final terms legitimate a revolt against the ruler.

al-Siyasa

The act of ruling, governance, was normally translated as al-siyasa (which is the modern word for politics). Initially, this was a general term for however the imam or ruler governed over the Muslim society.20 From about the third Muslim century, it was however linked to the Shariʿa as al-siyasa al-sharʿiyya, which can be translated as “governance in line with the Revelation.” The ­scholars ­accepted that al-siyasa al- Sharʿiyya was different from al-qadaʾ, and that the ruler must have prerogatives beyond that of the pure law of the scholars. However, the second element of the term also indicated that proper and legitimate siyasa must in some way be based on the Shariʿa, and thus limited by the prescriptions of the law of Islam. The question was what “in some way” meant. In the literature, the two terms al-siyasa and Shariʿa are often seen as opposites, in that al-siyasa refers to the ruler’s unfettered power to do whatever he wanted. It is certainly not difficult to find cases of strained relations between the sultan and the legal scholars. However, most often it was not so much a dichotomy as a division of labour. The ruler’s prerogatives were generally accepted by the scholars under the assumption that he worked under al-siyasa al- Sharʿiyya, that is that his acts were for the implementation of the “five protections” and the principles of the Shariʿa. This idea that the sultan’s siyasa could go beyond the scholarly jurisprudence of fiqh as long as it followed the “spirit of the Shariʿa,” was expressed by Ibn ʿAqil (d. 1119). As the acts of the (legitimate) sultan was aimed at protecting the people from chaos, they were allowed even when they had no particular basis in the Revelation. Here Ibn ʿAqil criticised the earlier statement by the school-founder al-Shafiʿi (d. 820) who only allowed al-siyasa when it directly

20

Muhammad Khalid Masud, “The Doctrine of Siyāsa in Islamic Law,” Recht van de Islam 18 (2001): 1–29; and Émile Tyan, “Méthodologie et sources du droit en Islam (Istiḥsān, Istiṣlāḥ, Siyāsa šarʿiyya),” Studia Islamica 10 (1959): 79–109.

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executed express statements in the Shariʿa.21 The sultans, said Ibn ʿAqil, must have discretion to follow their own judgement (raʾy) as long as it did not oppose explicit Revelation texts. This development towards greater acceptance of the ruler’s freedom to act can also be seen in that al-Shafiʿi did not allow the sultan to deal with affairs relating to huquq Allah, cases concerning the rights of God / society (­including hudud crimes) which only the qadi could settle. This was clearly in ­contradiction with reality, since several of the hudud crimes carried the death penalty, and these penalties the ruler generally would not let slip from his control, be it only the power to pardon or confirm the sentence given by a qadi.22 So, by the eleventh century, the political theorist al-Mawardi (d. 1058) granted that the ruler could handle matters of huquq Allah, since that was necessary for the ruler to carry out his duty to protect society.23 Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) went even further in allowing the ruler freedom of action in the enforcement of a just al-siyasa.24 The theoreticians thus used the term al-siyasa to accommodate for the clear reality of the day, that the ruler’s governance had political and legal applications they did not control. However, by subsuming it under a concept of ­al-siyasa al-sharʿiyya, they made this governance subject to the Shariʿa, not in the strict jurisprudence of fiqh, but under the divine intentions of God’s maqasid, intentions that could be rationally described by the scholars, and against which they could compare the actions of the ruler. This conception of maqasid may thus be translated as the “spirit of the Shariʿa,” being the aim to protect society, religion and the individuals in the community.25 The ruler’s power was 21 Al-Shāfiʿī, Kitāb al-Umm (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma, 1987), vi, 51; Ibn ʿAqīl, Kitāb al-Funūn (Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1970), i, 289, both quoted in Masud, “Doctrine of Siyāsa,” 5–10. 22 Emile Tyan, Histoire de lʾorganisation judiciaire en pays dʾIslam (Leiden: e.j. Brill, 1960), 224. 23 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Siyāsa al-Sharʿiyya fī Iṣlāḥ al-Rāʿī waʿl-Raʾiyya (Cairo: al-Shaʿb, 1971), 184; in Masud, 10–13. 24 Baber Johansen, “A Perfect Law in an Imperfect Society: Ibn Taymiyya’s Concept of ‘­Governance in the Name of the Sacred Law’,” in The Law Applied, Contextualizing the Islamic Shariʿa, ed. Peri Bearman, Wolfhart Heinrichs and Bernard G. Weiss (London: i.b. Tauris, 2008), 259–287; and Abdessamad Belhaj, “Law and Order According to Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya: A Re-Examination of siyāsa sharʿiyya,” in Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law: Debating Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, ed. Birgit Krawietz and Georges Tamer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 400–421. 25 Muhammad Khalid Masud, Shāṭibīʾs Philosophy of Islamic Law (Islamabad: Islamic ­Research Institute 1995).

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thus not unfettered, and it was the religious scholars who could, as interpreters of the true meaning of God’s maqasid, set the limits to the ruler’s actions. It must however be emphasised that such limitations were never institutionalised, and there was, short of protest or revolt, no way an individual, or society through the scholars, could impose their understanding of God’s maqasid over those of the ruler.26 So far, they thus remained on the level of the theory of legitimacy. In actual history, scholars, dependent on the ruler’s economic support or not, generally allowed him wide leeway to define what was for the “protection of the society and religion.” The sultans did not necessarily see this as much of a restraint and accepted fully such theoretical parameters to their rule. But it explains why sultans increasingly saw the need for attaching to themselves groups of religious scholars, a mufti council, who not only discussed strictly legal matters, but also gave their sanction to political decisions of the sultan, such as going to war.27 By issuing a fatwa on the correctness of this or that action, the scholars accepted that the ruler acted within the framework of God’s maqasid, and at the same time reaffirmed that it was their ­prerogative to make such a distinction.

The Ruler and the Courts

The relationship between the Shariʿa law proper, determined by the scholars through their fiqh, and the practical application of the wider “spirit” of the Shariʿa, al-siyasa, was reflected in court practice. The various states and ­regions of Islam organised their legal systems in various ways across the centuries, with various types of specialised courts for different purposes. However, we can in the classical period group these into qadi or Shariʿa courts, ruled by established scholars according to the rules and regulations of fiqh, and siyasa courts, where the “sultan,” the ruler or another representative of political power, was the judge. The archetypical example of a siyasa court was the mazalim court, the court “for righting wrongs.”28 26

Khaled Abou El Fadl, “Constitutionalism and the Islamic Sunni Legacy,” ucla Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law 1 (2001), 67–101, and Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2005), 282–283. 27 Wael B. Hallaq, Sharīʿa: Theory, Practice, Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 133. 28 Tyan, Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire, 433–521. See also Christian Müller, Gerichtspraxis im Stadtstaat Córdoba: Zum Recht der Gesellschaft in einer mālikitisch-islamischen Rechtstradition des 5./11. Jahrhunderts (Leiden: e.j. Brill, 1999), 103–174, for examples of siyasa institutions in al-Andalus.

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These two types of courts may be seen to represent a clear dichotomy, b­ etween “religion” (fiqh, formulated by independent legal scholars, with total rejection of any idea that the ruler could vet or influence the rules of law thereby determined), and “state,” the autochthonous power of the sultan in the mazalim court, unfettered by the laws of religion. This distinction is reflected in Muslim legal theory and shows how “religion” and “politics” were demarcated in Islamic thought. However, that does not mean that they were antithetical opposites, and both parties accepted and respected the other. The issue here is to what degree this system of dual courts can be said to represent a “rule of law.” The mazalim were fully recognised in the theory of Shariʿa law, under the principle of al-siyasa. The basis for this acceptance was the principle, variously expressed, that the strict procedures of fiqh, while true in general, could not solve all issues under the five necessities, or could in certain circumstances result in injustice for individuals. Thus, the schools of law had various methods in their fiqh methodologies for circumventing such situations. The principle of shubuhat, that if an act that in general fell under the hudud penalties could have been mistaken for a legal act, then that penalty should not be applied, is in itself an avoidance of the negative effects of blind application of general rules.29 In Hanafi law, this principle is more generally called istihsan, “seeking the good,” and allows for the suspension of general rules of fiqh30 when these would lead to a clearly unjust result in cases specified. In Maliki law, a ­parallel principle is called istislah, “seeking maslaha, social welfare.” These were not general suspensions of fiqh, but a principle that allowed jurists to designate particular cases where “necessity” (darura) forced a modification of the ­general rules. The Shariʿa courts were subject to very strict rules of procedure, in particular in what we could call “penal law,” punishment for crimes.31 Well known is the example that a crime could, short of confession, only be considered proven by the fully concurring testimony of two morally upstanding and competent male, free and Muslim witnesses.32 Challenging the moral probity of an otherwise impartial witness to a murder or a theft could be enough to have the 29 Vikør, Between God and the Sultan, 284. 30 In theory only for rules that are based on human jurisprudence, that is qiyas analogy, not those based directly on the Revealed texts, but exceptions were possible; Vikør, Between God and the Sultan, 67. 31 Rudolph Peters, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 13–16. 32 Or one male and two female witnesses, except in cases carrying the death penalty.

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case dismissed, if less than two acceptable witnesses then remained. The two testimonies should also be fully concurring, thus two witnesses where one had seen, but not heard a conversation between two suspects, while the other had heard what was said, but not seen the two who spoke, caused both to be rejected, as they were then considered two different observations. A confession was a definite proof if it was stated freely and by someone fully competent in mind. To ascertain this, however, the confession had to be delivered before the judge in court, or in front of two witnesses of acceptable probity, where it was the witnesses that constituted the proof value. In some periods, a confession given to the police was thus generally inadmissible, since policemen were in principle morally suspect, as they were employed by the state and their witness to the confession was thus unacceptable.33 The suspect could at any time retract his confession of a more serious hadd crime before the judge. Such very strict rules of procedure often made it difficult or impossible to obtain a verdict in a criminal case in a Shariʿa court. Partly for this reason, Shariʿa courts were more often used for and adapted to settlement of conflicts between two parties than for sanctioning crimes.34 However, while this may have been agreeable for those suspected of criminal activity, it was less so for the victims who could then not get satisfaction for the wrongs they had ­suffered. Hence, it was accepted that these then could take their case to the separate mazalim courts, which were totally freed from the procedural limitations of the Shariʿa courts. The mazalim court could thus hear cases which had first been brought to the Shariʿa court but without conclusive result, or cases could be brought ­directly to the mazalim. As in the Shariʿa court, the case could be raised by a plaintiff, but the sultan could decide a matter without the defendant, or either party, present, and could initiate cases, all different from the Shariʿa court. He could send a case back to the Shariʿa court for review, thus work as a court of appeal,35 or to arbitration between the parties. In the search for evidence, he was similarly unbound by the strict rules of admissible evidence set for the 33

Rudolph Peters, “Murder on the Nile: Homicide Trials in 19th Century Egyptian Shariʿa Courts,” Die Welt des Islams 30 (1990): 112–113. 34 Vikør, Between God and the Sultan, 171, also Mohammad Fadel, “Adjudication in the Mālikī Madhhab: A Study of Legal Process in Medieval Islamic Law” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1995), 36–130. 35 Thus being one method of effectuating appeals in a system then in theory did not known of such; Mohammad Hashim Kamali, “Appellate Review and Judicial Independence In ­Islamic Law,” in Islam and public law, ed. Chibli Mallat (London: Graham & Trotman, 1993), 62–63; also David Powers, “On Judicial Review in Islamic Law,” Law & Society Review 26 (1992): 315–341.

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Shariʿa court and could make his own investigation, and rely on testimonies unacceptable to the Shariʿa court. All this seems to support the idea that, if we accept the Shariʿa court with its fairly rigid established procedures and laws as constituting a pre-modern “rule of law,” then that was then nullified by the arbitrary legal power the ruler had in the parallel mazalim court. But, while classical authors emphasise the independent and “extra-ordinary” nature of the mazalim from the Shariʿa courts, they also considered the latter to be the superior court (thus, that the mazalim would if possible return cases to the Shariʿa court so it could make the final decision).36 It must thus be emphasised that the mazalim courts were considered fully legitimate under the Shariʿa and not in opposition to it.37 Thus, scholarly qadis regularly participated in these courts and advised the mazalim judge on his verdict, and al-Mawardi also makes the presence of such jurists “to provide information on established rights” a prerequisite for the court.38 While the theory said it was the “ruler” (imam or sultan) who should preside over his court, the actual ruler of course seldom did and instead delegated his authority to the governor, or more commonly, to a specified official for the task. This could often be a trained qadi, thus a religious scholar, although a qadi would normally not hold the post of mazalim judge and judge of the Shariʿa court at the same time; the appointment to the mazalim would be temporary or one step on a scholar’s career path. Thus, in spite of the emphasis on the freedom of the mazalim court to hand out judgments, the discussions around it put more emphasis on procedure than the content of the law. The mazalim could of course not contravene those commandments that were based directly on the Revelation (rather than on the human legal ijtihad on the revealed texts), and the court was both part of and subject to the idea of al-siyasa, the preservation of social welfare. It is also worth noting that, although the mazalim could take both criminal cases and settlement of conflicts between individuals (like the Shariʿa courts), the writers on the subject emphasise complaints against public officials as an ­important 36 Tyan, Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire, 433–521; and Mohammed Fadel, “State and Sharia,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Islamic Law, ed. Rudolph Peters and Peri Bearman (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 99–100. 37 Mathieu Tillier, “Qāḍīs and the Political Use of the maẓālim Jurisdiction under the ʿAbbāsids,” in Public Violence in Islamic Societies: Power, Discipline and the Construction of the Public Sphere, 7th–19th Centuries ce, ed. Christian Lange and Maribel Fierro ­(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 42–60. 38 ʿAli b. Muhammad al-Mawardi, The Ordinances of Government (Reading: Garnet 1996), 90.

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part of the mazalim’s area of operation. In this case, rather than being a weapon of a ruler’s arbitrary rule, it could (like the huquq Allah) as much be society, in this case individuals who felt themselves wronged by the state, that used the concept to limit such arbitrary rule, with the help of sympathetic mazalim judges who used the authority of the ruler to keep his minions in check. Again, this is of course still at the normative level, and for lack of records, it is hard for us to see how far this corresponded to historical reality, which could evidently be less lenient. It should also be added that the mazalim met less frequently than the regular Shariʿa courts. The general public would probably have more contact with a lower level of state authority, the police (al-­shurta), which also held a court for petty crimes that was fairly unfettered by the ­restraints of the fiqh procedures.39 The police court initiated prosecution on its own accord without need for any plaintiff, and could and often did obtain confessions by beating or torture, unacceptable by the Shariʿa courts proper. In principle, the police court should only deal with minor cases, more important ones being referred to the Shariʿa or the mazalim courts, but a typical situation would probably be that a hudud crime such as being found drunk in a public place would be settled with a lock-up and a quick round with the stick in the police court, rather than going to the proper and more serious process of ­applying the hudud in a Shariʿa court. Closer to the Shariʿa court was a third type, which is perhaps better seen as a stepping stone between the two, the municipal administrative court of the muhtasib.40 This term is often translated as “market inspector,” as perhaps the most important part of his office was to regulate the markets and ensure fairness in trade, thus controlling weights and measures, value of coins, and similar. However, the muhtasib also had more general municipal duties, such as ensuring the free passage of the streets of the town, and could for example order the removal of a house or house extension that blocked a street (evidently a not infrequent occurrence in the narrow lanes of the medieval Muslim cities). More generally, the term muhtasib stems from hisba, which means “­balance” (thus in fair trade), but is also used for social balance. So, the muhtasib was in charge of public morality, and could on his own initiative, without need for any individual plaintiff, intervene to stop activities that contravened such social balance. While this was certainly an area that the court addressed, most 39 Vikør, Between God and the Sultan, 193–195; and Tyan, Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire, 566–616. 40 Müller, Gerichtspraxis im Stadtstaat Córdoba, 117–128. The most detailed study of the muhtasib is probably now Kristen Stilt, Islamic Law in Action: Authority, Discretion and Everyday Experiences in Mamluk Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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of the muhtasib’s activity seems however to have focused on his role to ensure fairness in markets. The office of muhtasib was closely linked to the Shariʿa, and the position was always filled with a trained qadi. It could also be a stepping stone in the career of a judge. Thus, while it was not a Shariʿa court as such, and had several aspects in common with the mazalim court (such as the freedom to initiate action without a plaintiff), it was generally considered inside the area of the Shariʿa and of fiqh, not that of the ruler.

Categories of Subjects

As mentioned, Islamic law never had a modern conception of “equality of all citizens” before the law. Status differences resulted in legal differences. These were focused on three main dimensions: gender, freedom and religion. The three did not necessarily correlate, thus a free dhimmi (non-Muslim) could not testify in court while a woman could do so, so religion was there a more ­important restriction than gender. But in the calculation of compensation for murder and bodily harm (diya), no difference was made whether the victim was Muslim or dhimmi, while the compensation for women was half that of a man, so gender was in that case a more relevant category than religion.41 Slaves created their own particular legal issues, in being both responsible as human beings, Muslim or not, and at the same time non-responsible objects of property, the consequences of their actions instead falling upon their owners. Corporal punishments (the number of lashes) was thus always halved for slaves, and a slave could not be executed for fornication, unlike free men and women.42 This was clearly not out of concern for the slave, but balancing the interest of the owner against the personal responsibility of the slave. The owner had to pay the blood money (the slave not having any property of his own), but less than if he had himself committed the crime. Social status other than these three did also play a role, such as in the ­legality of marriage which required an element of equality, kafaʿa, between

41

This according to the Ḥanafi and Ḥanbali schools; Johansen, “Claims of Men,” 70–71 and “Secular and Religious Elements,” 207, the Malikis and Shafiʿis consider the dhimmis to have a lower diya, Peters, Crime, 51. See also Gianluca P. Parolin, “Equality Before the Law,” in Ashgate Research Companion, 123–135. 42 Peters, Crime, 60–61.

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the two parties.43 The religious scholars tended to focus on equality in religious piety, but lack of genealogical as well as social equality could cause one family to ­demand the denial of a marriage. Punishments for crimes could also be ­adjusted according to the general social standing of the perpetrator. Denigration (such as being paraded through the streets with an official shouting out his crime) could in many cases be the punishment for someone with a higher social position, while those of lower standing would have to suffer corporal punishment, high fines or similar for the same crime.44 The justification for this was that the social stigma of denigration was greater for the notables than for the lower classes, who had “less to lose” by this, and thus required sterner sanctions. This may, however, be seen as comparable to a modern Western court adjusting the amount of a fine to the income level of the convicted criminal, seeking an amount that “bites” for the particular individual in the dock. Predictability Where does then this lead us in the search for a pre-modern “rule of law”? An important issue to look for, can be the issue of arbitrary or predictable legal rules. To what degree could a member of society, before he committed an act know with reliable certainty whether it would be considered lawful or not, and if accused, how the court would treat such an accusation? Were the procedures of the “repressive state apparatuses,” here the courts and ruler, arbitrary and ultimately unknowable in advance, subject to the caprice of the judge? This, more than conceptions of “justice” or “fairness” (which we would have to contextualise in place and time) could perhaps be a measure of the level of rule of law in a pre-modern society before the arrival of “universal” ideas of human rights in the modern period. At the normative level, then, the society was ruled by God’s law, the Shariʿa based on an established Revelation. The ruler did no more than to put the Shariʿa into effect. As such he was an executor of huquq Allah, an agent for 43

44

Amalia Zomeño, “Kafaʾa in the Maliki School: A fatwa from Fifteenth-Century Fez,” in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice, ed. Robert Gleave and Eugenia Kermeli (London: i.b. Tauris, 1997), 194–204. Irene Schneider, “Imprisonment in Pre-Classical and Classical Islamic Law,” Islamic Law and Society 2 (1995): 157–173; Christian Lange, “Legal and Cultural Aspects of Ignominious Parading (Tashhīr) in Islam,” Islamic Law and Society 14 (2007): 81–108, and Everett K. Rowson, “Reveal or Conceal: Public Humiliation and Banishment as Punishments in Early Islamic Times,” in Public Violence in Islamic Societies, 119–129.

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the social welfare that was God’s intention behind the Shariʿa. When he was allowed to establish a parallel court system, the mazalim, it was only to promote the same divine intention of the Shariʿa, social welfare, in cases where the Shariʿa courts themselves were for various reasons unable to reach this common and defined goal. The huquq Allah were the rights of society, not of the ruler, and the ruler was himself subject to the same huquq Allah, and could be challenged on those grounds by the scholars, who ultimately represented society in such claims. In their descriptions, still normative, of how this system worked, the scholars depict the procedures of the Shariʿa courts as extremely predictable, in that they could prevent the qadi from passing sentence even when guilt would appear obvious, for example in the case of corresponding, but not identical oral and ocular witness to the same event. In this way, a thief could “play the system” of procedure and avoid conviction by taking the Shariʿa procedures into account: to be convicted of the hudud punishment for theft, the thief had to remove the stolen object from an enclosed place. If he threw it out a window to an accomplice, the criterion of removal was not fulfilled – neither had taken the object out – and none of them could be convicted.45 This seems like the poster case of the “criminal knowing in advance” what the court would do, and the opposite of arbitrary rule where the judge ruled from his gut feelings. The mazalim, on the other hand, being freed of precisely these restrictions and subject only to the ruler’s own decision, seems to be the opposite, arbitrary and unpredictable. How could then the two systems live peacefully side by side, as they evidently did for several centuries? Two factors could help explain that. One is, as we have said, that the mazalim were in fact not so unfettered. The presence of the qadis in this court, and indeed the fact that qadis often presided over them, ensured that the ruler did not here have a free hand, but had to conform to what these scholars, who again can be said to represent society and social mores, considered acceptable as the “spirit of the Shariʿa,” contextualised of course to time and place, and probably also to political and social relations of power in that place. The other was that the Shariʿa court itself did have greater leeway. There were of course many crimes that were not covered by the five hudud or the similarly specified crimes of murder and bodily harm. Other crimes were c­ overed by the generic term taʿzir, where the punishment was not specified in the law-books and which did not have so stringent rules of evidence as the hudud. The majority of scholars were of the opinion that the taʿzir punishments must be lower 45

Colin Imber, Ebuʾs-Suʿud: The Islamic Legal Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 213–214.

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than the least severe hudud punishment, which is forty lashes,46 but otherwise left the nature and severity of the punishment up to the judge in question. This opened for a wider range of sanctions, such as the mentioned public humiliation, later on a larger part played by imprisonment and fines. Seen from the level of the Shariʿa as a law spanning worlds and centuries, both the mazalim and taʿzir appear then to be arbitrary, in that the punishments are not codified, contrary to the hudud and murder cases. And there is no doubt that they open for an arbitrariness that we must assume was far more widespread in actual reality than in the normative texts. But this arbitrariness could also mean adaptation to a historical and social reality that was fairly stable in each country and century but varied over Islam’s total span of time and space. A universal Shariʿa law could probably be no more specific than it was. Such adaptation to social reality was also in some cases accepted into the framework of the Shariʿa rules through the concept of ʿurf, “common practice,” which could not be the basis of a rule itself, but could in certain cases (such as the level of “fair rent”) determine how the rule should be understood. It is reasonable to assume that taʿzir judgements, and very often also mazalim judgements, often coincided with ʿurf, more so than the textbooks allowed.47 We do not have much in the way of court records or other documents from the medieval period to see the actual reality behind these normative texts. What we do have does show a complicity but also occasional conflict between ruler and scholars, and also that judges could disregard completely the rules of the textbooks when need be.48 The material does not lend itself to hard and fast conclusions, but one way of putting it might be that it seems courts and judges knew of and attempted to apply the procedures and laws of the Shariʿa as far as possible in the Shariʿa courts, but used a social construction of 46 47

48

The Maliki school did not restrain the application of taʾzir punishments; Peters, Crime, 67. Miriam Hoexter, “Qāḍī, Muftī and Ruler: Their Roles in the Development of Islamic Law,” in Law, Custom and Statute in the Muslim World: Studies in Honor of Aharon Layish, ed. Ron Shaham (Leiden: e.j. Brill, 2007), 71; see also Ayman Shabana, Custom in Islamic Law and Legal Theory: The Development of the Concepts of ʿurf and ʿādah in the Islamic Legal T ­ radition (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010); and Gideon Libson, “On the Development of Custom as a Source of Law in Islamic Law,” Islamic Law and Society 4 (1997): 131–155. For examples from fifteenth-century Cairo, see e.g. Yossef Rapoport, Marriage, Money and Divorce in a Medieval Islamic Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). See also how the laws against apostasy were actually instead used as weapons in internal quarrels among scholars, in Joseph H. Escovitz, The Office of qâḍî al-quḍât in Cairo under the Baḥrî Mamlûks (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1984), 134–147.

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“­fairness” to guide them when the flexibility of the Shariʿa allowed it, such as in taʿzir punishments or in other ways, and were not adverse to turn a blind eye even to fixed rules when that would appear to be the only option.49 This would also coincide with the anthropological, modern, observation that qadis often try to adjust the judgements to what causes least social upheaval, and could also be the most likely guiding line for the mazalim courts, possibly except in cases of strong conflict between ruler and ruled.50

Ottomans and State Law

The relations between state, scholars and society were of course never static, and a common trend seems to be that, after the scholars were able to establish their independence from the state and supremacy over the law in the early Abbasid period, the state and ruler continuously tried to regain an influence and control over the legal system. This was the situation in the Middle Ages, with the establishment of sultanic councils (majlis) of various kinds between rulers and leading scholars, but it was the Ottoman empire from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that took a number of steps towards state control over the law.51 The most noticeable of these concerning the points discussed, was that the Ottomans abolished the mazalim courts, and unified everything under the Shariʿa court system. At the same time, the sultan imposed a set of regulations, kanun that were in theory subject to the Shariʿa and, like the mazalim, “filled the gaps” that the Shariʿa lawbooks did not cover, but in reality took ­precedence over the Shariʿa texts.52 These kanun were to be applied in the Shariʿa courts and also in the fatwa declaration, which were also centralised under a stateappointed chief mufti, the shaykh al-islam. It must however, be added that the kanun were also subject to the concept of al-siyasa al-sharʿiyya, and that when 49

Lawrence Rosen, The Anthropology of Justice: Law as Culture in Islamic Society (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 50 Unfortunately, lacking records of the pre-Ottoman mazalim, we have little way of knowing to what extent a ruler could or did use the mazalim as an instrument of power over society. Historical records however seem rather to point to the dismissal of qadis as a main instrument of political influence over the court system. 51 Vikør, Between God and the Sultan, 206–221; and Haim Gerber, State, Society and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective (Albany: suny Press, 1994). 52 Imber, Ebuʾs-Suʿud, 24–58, and Richard Repp, “Qanun and Shariʿa in the Ottoman ­Context,” in Islamic Law, Social and Historical Contexts, ed. Aziz al-Azmeh (London: Routledge, 1988), 132.

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a kanun rule covered a topic also established in fiqh, it was generally closely similar to the Shariʿa rule. Nevertheless, the fact that the kanun were based on state authority and the sultan’s formulation, made this a sea change in the relation between state and law. Thus, while the modernising efforts of the nineteenth century in a way reintroduced the shariʿa/mazalim dichotomy through the establishment of “civil courts” where plaintiffs unsatisfied with the Shariʿa court could seek redress for crimes or other conflicts, it may be said that the introduction of modern, codified laws in the Middle East in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was only a continuation of a process of modernisation that had already taken a long step three centuries earlier with the Ottoman empire as the first “modern” state of the region.

Rule of Law?

There is no doubt that in historical reality, sultanic rule was often arbitrary, nor that neither the Shariʿa nor mazalim courts were free of abuse or of interference and meddling by the authorities. However, there are clearly also elements in the arguing about the Shariʿa and the courts that may well be considered as foundations for a rule of law. The most basic one is, of course, the idea that the divine will behind the Shariʿa is not arbitrary, but for the rationally understandable aim of “welfare,” masalih, and that this is the foundation of “the rights of God,” huquq Allah, which bind not only the subjects but also the ruler who should protect and defend them. The Shariʿa courts had strong elements of predictability when it comes to the most critical elements of huquq Allah, the hudud laws, as well as in the laws of murder and bodily harm which were clearly expressed in great detail and where it would difficult to circumvent them legitimately. The same applies for many elements of interpersonal issues – economic conflicts, marriage, inheritance, and so on – which were also subject to specific rules that the judge would apply. In these matters, the parties could have a clear understanding before taking the case to court of what the result would be. When it came to matters falling under taʿzir, however, as well as those taken to the mazalim, the issue is not quite so clear-cut. These could be open to arbitrariness by the judges (or of rulers, in the latter case), but there were also opening for adaptation to changing social and historical circumstances. Thus, such decisions made on the judge’s discretion could also well be fully predictable in each historical context, when the judge ruled according to what society at that particular time and place found just. To go further into how arbitrary or not court practices

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were in such cases, the historian would need to go into case studies of court decisions to see the range of verdicts given in similar cases in each period, and of course with the danger that the records are edited to fit a pattern. Not due, of course, to any concept of judicial precedence, which did not exist in the Shariʿa, but to fit society’s conception of “justice” and the welfare of the umma. The subjects of the state could thus claim certain rights, both in interpersonal conflicts under the huquq al-ʿibad, regulated by predictable and known rules, and against public officials when they were seen to overstep the huquq Allah. The subjects were not equal before the law, but all free men and women, including non-Muslims, had some rights specific to their status. While the strict social division of society into the “elites” and the “common people” were so strong that it would be ahistorical to speak of “citizens of the Islamic state” in medieval society, the idea of the inhabitants of the Muslim state as slaves subject to the caprices of an unrestrained sultan and haphazard whims of a judge is equally ahistorical. Bibliography Abou El Fadl, Khaled. “Constitutionalism and the Islamic Sunni Legacy.” UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law 1 (2001): 67–101. Ayubi, Nazih N. Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World. London: Routledge, 1994. Belhaj, Abdessamad. “Law and Order According to Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim alJawziyya: A Re-Examination of siyāsa sharʿiyya.” In Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law: Debating Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, edited by Birgit Krawietz and Georges Tamer, 400–421. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. Bingham, Tom. The Rule of Law. London: Penguin, 2011. Black, Antony. The History of Islamic Political Thought. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001. Coulson, Neil J. “The State and the Individual in Islamic Law.” International and ­Comparative Law Quarterly 4 (1957): 49–60. Crone, Patricia. Medieval Islamic Political Thought. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2005. Emon, Anver M. “Ḥuqūq Allāh and Ḥuqūq al-ʿIbād: A Legal Heuristic for a Natural Rights Regime.” Islamic Law and Society 13 (2006): 325–391. Escovitz, Joseph H. The Office of qâḍî al-quḍât in Cairo under the Baḥrî Mamlûks. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1984. Fadel, Mohammad. “Adjudication in the Mālikī Madhhab: A Study of Legal Process in Medieval Islamic Law.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1995.

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Fadel, Mohammed. “State and Sharia.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Islamic Law, edited by Rudolph Peters and Peri Bearman, 93–107. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Gerber, Haim. State, Society and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994. Ghazaleh, Pascale (ed.). Held in Trust: Waqf in the Islamic World. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2011. Hallaq, Wael B. Sharīʿa: Theory, Practice, Transformations. Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press, 2009. Hoexter, Miriam. “Qāḍī, Muftī and Ruler: Their Roles in the Development of Islamic Law.” In Law, Custom and Statute in the Muslim World: Studies in Honor of Aharon Layish, edited by Ron Shaham, 67–85. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2007. Ibn ʿAqīl, Kitāb al-Funūn. Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1970. Ibn Taymiyya. al-Siyāsa al-Sharʿiyya fī Iṣlāḥ al-Rāʿī waʿl-Raʾiyya. Cairo: al-Shaʿb, 1971. Imber, Colin. Ebuʾs-Suʿud: The Islamic Legal Tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997. Johansen, Baber. “The Claims of Men and the Claims of God: The Limits of Government Authority in Hanafite Law.” In Pluriformiteit en verdeling van de macht in het Midden-Oosten, 60–104. Nijmegen: MOI, 1980. Johansen, Baber. “Secular and Religious Elements in Hanafite Law: Function and Limits of the Absolute Character of Government Authority.” In Contingency in a Sacred Law, edited by Baber Johansen, 189–218. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999. Johansen, Baber. “A Perfect Law in an Imperfect Society: Ibn Taymiyya’s Concept of ‘Governance in the Name of the Sacred Law’.” In The Law Applied, Contextualizing the Islamic Shariʿa, edited by Peri Bearman, Wolfhart Heinrichs and Bernard G. Weiss, 259–294. London: I.B. Tauris, 2008. Kamali, Mohammad Hashim. “Appellate Review and Judicial Independence In Islamic Law.” In Islam and public law, edited by Chibli Mallat, 49–83. London: Graham & Trotman, 1993. Lange, Christian. “Legal and Cultural Aspects of Ignominious Parading (Tashhīr) in Islam.” Islamic Law and Society 14 (2007): 81–108. Lapidus, Ira M. “The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early ­Islamic society.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (1975): 363–385. Libson, Gideon. “On the Development of Custom as a Source of Law in Islamic Law.” Islamic Law and Society 4 (1997): 131–155. Masud, Muhammad Khalid. Shāṭibīʾs Philosophy of Islamic Law. Islamabad: Islamic ­Research Institute, 1995. Masud, Muhammad Khalid. “The Doctrine of Siyāsa in Islamic Law.” Recht van de Islam 18 (2001): 1–29. Masud, Muhammad Khalid, Rudolph Peters, and David S. Powers, eds., Dispensing ­Justice in Islam: Qadis and their Judgments. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006.

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al-Mawardi, ʿAli b. Muhammad. The Ordinances of Government. Reading: Garnet 1996. Mottahedeh, Roy. “Wilayat al-faqih.” In Vol. 2 of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics, edited by Emad El-Din Shahin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Müller, Christian. Gerichtspraxis im Stadtstaat Córdoba: Zum Recht der Gesellschaft in einer mālikitisch-islamischen Rechtstradition des 5./11. Jahrhunderts. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999. Nagel, Tilman. Das islamische Recht: Eine Einführung. Westhofen: WVA-Verlag Skulima, 2001. Opwis, Felicitas. “Islamic Law and Legal Change: The Concept of Maslaha in Classical and Contemporary Islamic Legal Theory.” In Shariʿa: Islamic Law in the Contemporary Context, edited by Abbas Amanat and Frank Griffel, 62–82. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. Opwis, Felicitas. Maṣlaḥa and the Purpose of the Law: Islamic Discourse on Legal Change from the 4th/10th to 8th/14th century. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2010. Parolin, Gianluca P. “Equality Before the Law.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Islamic Law, edited by Rudolph Peters and Peri Bearman, 123–135. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Peters, Rudolph. “Murder on the Nile: Homicide Trials in 19th Century Egyptian Shariʿa Courts.” Die Welt des Islams 30 (1990): 98–116. Peters, Rudolph. Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Powers, David. “On Judicial Review in Islamic Law.” Law & Society Review 26 (1992): 315–341. Rapoport, Yossef. Marriage, Money and Divorce in a Medieval Islamic Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Repp, Richard. “Qanun and Shariʿa in the Ottoman Context.” In Islamic Law, Social and Historical Contexts edited by Aziz al-Azmeh, 124–145. London: Routledge, 1988. Rosen, Lawrence. The Anthropology of Justice: Law as Culture in Islamic Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Rowson, Everett K. “Reveal or Conceal: Public Humiliation and Banishment as Punishments in Early Islamic Times.” In Public Violence in Islamic Societies: Power, Discipline and the Construction of the Public Sphere, 7th–19th Centuries CE, edited by Christian Lange and Maribel Fierro, 119–129. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. Schneider, Irene. “Imprisonment in Pre-Classical and Classical Islamic Law.” Islamic Law and Society 2 (1995): 157–173. Shabana, Ayman. Custom in Islamic Law and Legal Theory: The Development of the Concepts of ʿurf and ʿādah in the Islamic Legal Tradition. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010. Al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad ibn Idrīs. Kitāb al-Umm. Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al- ʿĀmma, 1987.

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Stilt, Kristen. Islamic Law in Action: Authority, Discretion and Everyday Experiences in Mamluk Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Tillier, Mathieu. Les Cadis dʾIraq et l’état abbasside (132/750–334/945). Damascus: IFPO, 2009. Tillier, Mathieu. “Qāḍīs and the Political Use of the maẓālim Jurisdiction under the ʿAbbāsids.” In Public Violence in Islamic Societies: Power, Discipline and the Construction of the Public Sphere, 7th–19th Centuries CE, edited by Christian Lange and Maribel Fierro, 42–66. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. Tillier, Mathieu. “Judicial Authority and Qāḍīs’ Autonomy under the ʿAbbāsids.” ­al-Masāq 24 (2014): 119–131. Turner, Bryan S. Weber and Islam: A Critical Study. London: Routledge, 1978. Tyan, Émile. “Méthodologie et sources du droit en Islam (Istiḥsān, Istiṣlāḥ, Siyāsa šarʿiyya).” Studia Islamica 10 (1959): 79–109. Tyan, Emile. Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire en pays d’Islam. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960. Vikør, Knut S. Between God and the Sultan: A History of Islamic Law. London: Hurst & Co, 2005. Weiss, Bernard G. The Spirit of Islamic Law. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998. Zaman, Muhammad Qasim. “The Caliphs, the ʿUlamāʾ, and the Law: Defining the Role and Function of the Caliph in the Early ʿAbbāsid Period.” Islamic Law and Society 4 (1997): 1–36. Zomeño, Amalia. “Kafaʾa in the Maliki School: A fatwa from Fifteenth-Century Fez.” In Islamic Law: Theory and Practice, edited by Robert Gleave and Eugenia Kermeli, 194–204. London: I.B. Tauris, 1997.

chapter 11

The Struggle for Equality and Citizenship in Arab Political Thought: Ideological Debates and Conceptual Change Michaelle Browers Analysts are still grappling with the Arab uprisings of 2011, which overthrew heads of state in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. While the consequences of those events are still unfolding, a number of assessments of the political thought behind the political practice have come to the fore. The first is one that I have often heard from uprising scholar-activists at the myriad conferences, workshops and other forums in which I have participated in the wake of the uprisings. When I question these individuals about the intellectual and historical resources from which they draw their vision of politics – particularly the vision they hold of a future politics – I am most often told that they view themselves and their activism as unprecedented, that they are not beholden to any previous movements or ideologies, and that they prefer to create their own future, without reference to past models. The second view is one that circulates among academic and media analysts, particularly those trying to make sense of the reassertion of authoritarianism (what some have termed the “counterrevolution”) in the region. It is precisely the prevalence and resilience of authoritarian political ideas that is the problem, according to this view, and Egypt is pointed to as evidence: the May 2014 presidential election ushered in another military man of the same ilk as ousted president Hosni Mubarak, whose policies are nearly indistinguishable from the old regime. A third ­perspective asserts that contemporary political protests in general (and the Arab uprisings are taken to be no different) are not driven by ideas and/or lack a vision or even a coherent body of principles to guide their future entirely. The prominent political sociologist Sidney Tarrow claims that it is precisely the “generality” of the message of these new social movements that allows their repertoire to travel so well from one instance to another, one place to a­ nother – a characteristic he terms “modularity.”1 This last perspective has become ­sufficiently commonplace as to warrant critical investigation. 1 Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2011), 41.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_013

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In contrast to these views, I argue that not only are the core of activists who inspired and, for a time, led the Arab uprisings articulating distinctive notions of central political concepts such as citizenship, equality, justice and popular sovereignty, but their ideas neither lack precedent nor are they without some important shifts – even innovations – in thinking about these ideas in the history of modern Arab political thought. Tracing the concept of citizenship in Arab political thought reveals significant engagement with both earlier generations of reformist and revolutionary intellectuals from the Arab region and transnational engagements with critical political theorists across the globe.

Citizenship in the Nahda Period: Islamic Umma and Territorial Nationalism

Since the Arab renaissance of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century (what the Arabs call the Nahda), ideas like citizenship and equality have been contested and shifted and changed over time in regard to the rights and responsibilities associated with citizenship, the understandings of who bears those rights and responsibilities and the basis of civic membership, and the implications those understandings have for the character of the equality being sought. Knowledge of that history is essential for establishing the backdrop for any analysis of what is and is not distinctive about the concepts of citizenship being articulated by so many activists of the Arab uprising. However, we should insert one caveat here: we should not mistake the mere presence or absence of the word citizen (or citizenship) for the presence or absence of an idea. At the same time, as Michael Walzer points out, the particular choice of term one uses to name “a member of a political community, entitled to whatever prerogatives and encumbered with whatever responsibilities are attached to membership” can be quite significant.2 Rifaʿa al-Tahtawi, the Egyptian Liberal Nationalist whose translation and analysis of the 1814 French Charter was published in his major work, The Extraction of Pure Gold in the Abridgement of Paris in 1834, notes that what is “very ­precious” about the document begins with the very first article, where it is said that all French people are equal before the law, this refers to all those who live in France, from the highest to the humblest. No distinction 2 Michael Walzer, “Citizenship,” in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. Terence Ball, Richard Dagger, and Russell L. Hansen (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1989), 211.

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is made between them in terms of the application of the aforesaid laws of the code to the extent that legal charges can even be brought against the king, against whom a judgment is enforceable, just as it is for other people. So, behold this first article is highly conducive to the introduction of justice; it ensures the oppressed receive assistance, whereas the souls of the poor are satisfied that they are in fact important people when it comes to the execution of the laws. This matter is almost becoming a canonical saying among the French. It is also clear proof of the arrival among them of justice, and the high degree of progress in the civilized way of living. That which they call freedom and which they crave is what we call ‘justice’ and ‘equity’; inasmuch as ‘rule by freedom’ means establishing equality in judgments and laws so that the ruler cannot oppress any human being.3 In al-Tahtawi’s understanding, ordinary citizens should understand their rights (above all the right to freedom) and their duties, which are best summed up by hubb al-watan, the love of country, that binds together those who live in the same community (defined by habitation in the same territory) and calls them to their duties to sacrifice and submit to the law. Al-Tahtawi’s notion of citizenship is, in this sense, not merely a passive notion, for patriotism for him involves an active and participatory form of citizenship rooted in a concern for the welfare of one’s country and the duty to build a truly “civilised” society.4 It is also a notion of citizenship not based upon membership in an Islamic umma, but extended to all who live in the same country – that is, a territorial hubb alwatan becomes the focus of rights and duties.5 At the same time, despite the 3 Rifaʿa Rafiʿ al-Tahtawi, An Imam in Paris: Account of a Stay in France by an Egyptian Cleric (1826–1831) (Takhlis al-ibriz fi talkhis bariz aw al-diwan al-najlis bi-iwan Baris) (London: Saqi, 2004), 205. 4 This is noted by Albert Hourani: “[In al-Tahtawi] the emphasis is no longer on the passive duty of the subject to accept authority, it is on the active role of the citizen in building a truly civilized society; it is no longer exclusively on the mutual duties of members of the Islamic umma, but also of those who live in the same country.” Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1983), 78. 5 It is worth noting, however, Abdeslam Maghraoui’s poignant critique of liberal Egyptian nationalists who constructed a notion of citizenship based on “the myth that the Egyptian nation and people were an extension of Europe, rendering membership in the new p ­ olitical community and citizenship rights conditional on conformity with a European origin. B ­ ecause such a conception assumed a kind of individual who literally approximated the modern ­European man or woman.” Abdeslam M. Maghraoui, Liberalism without ­Democracy: Nationhood and Citizenship in Egypt, 1922–1936 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 185–187.

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conceptual equivalences al-Tahtawi is affirming between the French Constitutional Charter of 1814 and the Islamic tradition of political thought, it is quite clear that he maintains a notion of citizenship in which the ruler rules and the citizen is ruled – that is, the people must obey the ruler, but all (including the ruler) are bound to the limits imposed by God’s law. Equality, according to this conception is not an equality of function or power between ruler and subject, but an equality before God (wrought in the form of the ­Islamic law or Shariʿa). At the same time, al-Tahtawi does not merely reproduce the classical notions of Islamic rule and obedience aimed at political and social stability (perhaps most closely associated with Ibn Taymiyya). Rather, he maintains both that the ruler should do his best to retain good relations with and a positive image in the eyes of the populace and the government more generally provide for the political education of all citizens as a method of reform and development of the body politic. Central to al-Tahtawi’s vision was the conviction that a political education cultivates social virtues and, above all, patriotism (hubb al-watan), which leads citizens to contribute toward the building of a civilized society, where the love of the nation-state becomes the focus of one’s energy and efforts. We see in al-Tahtawi’s work an understanding of the relationship between citizen and government that is mutually constitutive. This idea is further developed in an 1881 writing of Muhammad ‘Abduh, whom many consider the founder of Islamic modernism: Legislators and institutors of laws must always take into account customs and traditional habits in order to establish laws in a just and beneficial manner. Indeed, the conditions of nations are themselves the true legislator, the wise, regulating guide. The governing power is actually dependent on the capacities of its subjects; the former does not take a single step unless induced to do so by the latter. True, we do not deny that the preparation of means and measures depends on the governing power. The government imposes these things on its subjects willy-nilly, but these impositions must be in accordance with the capacity of those ruled. Changes in the form of government and the replacement of its laws ­depend on the citizenry’s legitimate claims, and these are tantamount to the condition of the populace.6

6 Muhammad ʿAbduh, “Laws Should Change in Accordance with the Conditions of Nations,” in Modernist Islam 1840–1940: A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 53.

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ʿAbduh is quite clear that what binds together Egypt, along with all other Muslim countries is the Shariʿa. This emphasis on the capacity of people demonstrates the importance not just of popular will but, more importantly, of the active cultivation of a popular will of a particular kind. ʿAbduh’s student, Rashid Rida, explicitly bridges notions of a community formed by Islam and modern notions of territorial nationalism in an answer (fatwa) he provides to a series of questions from a Muslim from Indonesia ­regarding patriotism, Islamic unity, and the existence of non-Muslims in ­Muslim countries published in the journal al-Manar in 1933: The contemporary notion of patriotism expresses the unity of the people of different religions in their homeland and their cooperation in defending the homeland they share….The type of patriotism that should adorn a Muslim youth is that he be a good example for the people of the homeland, no matter what their religious affiliation, cooperating with them in every legitimate action for independence, for developing science, ­virtue, force, and resources on the basis of the Islamic law of preferring the ­closest relations in rights and duties.7 Rida goes on to explain that patriotism should not lead a Muslim to neglect Islam or diminish his relations with Muslims throughout the world. An Islamic citizenship, if it makes sense to call it this, and that notion is contested, in ­Rida’s mind takes priority over but should not generally diminish one’s territorial citizenship. Al-Tahtawi seems to shift priority in the other direction, toward a citizenship defined by one’s territorial nationalism. Despite difference between them, in each of these conceptions there is a distinctive understanding of a government activated citizenry that directs its energies toward the progress and development of the homeland.

Forging Independence After Colonialism: Socio-Economic Justice and the Search for a more Comprehensive Citizenship in the 1960s

In the post-independence period in the Arab region we begin to see the proliferation of distinctions between the political and economic rights of citizens just as the project of linking the two comes to the fore. In 1962, ten years after 7 Rashid Rida, “Patriotism, Nationalism, and Group Spirit in Islam,” in Islam in Transition: M ­ uslim Perspectives, ed. John J. Donohue and John L. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 43.

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taking power, Egyptian President Gamal Abd al-Nasser delivers a speech in which he offers an assessment of his first decade in office, taking to task both the colonialism that he takes credit for overthrowing and the “revolutionary leadership” that followed. The latter, he argues, “allowed itself to be misled by the democratic appearance of constitutional facades with no economic foundations” because “social freedom can only be achieved if each citizen is given the opportunity of acquiring a fair share of the national wealth.”8 ­Nasser’s speech, like so much political discourse of this period, works with an analytical distinction between social or economic citizenship (which emphasizes socioeconomic equality as essential citizenship) over political citizenship (which claims an equality of citizens based on liberal rights). Nasser elevates the ­former over the latter. This theme is further developed in the early writings of the Moroccan ­philosopher Muhammad ʿAbid al-Jabri, though with the opposite conclusion. In an essay, originally published in 1964, at a time, al-Jabri tells us, when nationalisation of “workshops, factories, mines and transportation” was a primary demand of Morocco’s “national progressive movement” and in the midst of a critique of “bourgeois democracy,” al- Jabri maintains that people perceive democracy as social democracy, that is, as “equality in rights and responsibilities, in living conditions, before the courts, in the corridors of power, at the school door and in every other aspect of life.”9 What is interesting about this piece is that al-Jabri is arguing against both those who would diminish the ­importance of political citizenship (“social democracy is not achievable without political democracy”) and for the necessity of economic citizenship to achieve real democracy (which for him is about equality in a comprehensive sense). In the “Western world today,” he argues, democracy means first and foremost “­political freedom…to enable citizens to fulfil their election ‘duty’” whereas “economic (liberal) freedom,” which he sees as the freedom “to carry out his or her economic activity according to his or her means and potential, without any restrictions” is treated only secondarily.10 In regard to the latter, he argues that political democracy cannot fully realise the people’s goals and interests. In regard to the former, he maintains that it is necessary to raise awareness, which requires civil liberties, first and foremost, free speech: “Raising the awareness of the masses is the responsibility of the enlightened avant garde, the labour 8

Gamal Abdel Nasser, “The Morrow of Independence,” in Contemporary Arab Political Thought ed. Anouar Abdel-Malek (London: Zed Books, 1983), 76–77. 9 Reprinted and translated in Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, Democracy, Human Rights and Law in Islamic Thought (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 115fn2, 111. 10 Al-Jabri, Democracy, Human Rights, and Law in Islamic Thought, 110.

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union leader, and the intellectuals also” in order to transform people’s desire to move up (and perhaps become themselves capitalists) into a more comprehensive understanding of the need for a full social transformation.11 This theme permeates not only left-leaning socialist and Arab nationalist intellectuals, but is also a central aspect of discussions surrounding citizenship among the Islamist intellectuals of the same period. Sayyid Qutb’s 1948 work, Social Justice in Islam, articulates a notion of “social justice” based on Islam and premised on Islamicising state, society, and citizen in a way that draws together the social and economic aspects of justice. Although less concerned with electoral forms of justice, he asserts that “social justice in Islam…is a comprehensive human justice, not merely an economic justice; that is to say, it embraces all sides of life and all aspects of freedom.”12 Qutb posits Islam’s social justice between the bankrupt materialism of communism, which “looks at man only from the stand-point of his material needs,” and the unnaturalism of Christianity, which “looks at man only from the stand-point of his spiritual desires and seeks to crush down the human instincts [for material things] in order to encourage those desires.”13 In his 1964 work, Milestones, Qutb posits Islamic justice as the alternative to the moral bankruptcy of both western “Democracy” and Russian Marxism – the latter of which failed, he argues, because it proved to be “against human nature.”14 In a work the author tells us was conceived in late 1960 or early 1961, but only published a decade later, the Algerian thinker Malik Bennabi offers a compelling account of how moments of citizenship in the sense J.G.A. Pocock describes as “membership in some public and political frame of action”15 are usurped by social forces that betray the original impulse of the movement in order to exert power. His is, in part, an account of theory falling short in ­practice, but it is also a critique of political elites who fail to carry out their promise of social and political development and sacrifice social ideas for selfish and material interests. He examines the Islamic reformist (islah) movement, which emerged in the 1920s and 1930s to raise popular resistance to French colonialism and, according to Bennabi, reached its “peak” in 1936 with 11 Al-Jabri, Democracy, Human Rights, and Law in Islamic Thought, 114. 12 Sayyid Qutb, Social Justice in Islam (Oneonta, ny: Islamic Publications International, 2000), 45. 13 Qutb, Social Justice in Islam, 45. 14 Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (Cedar Rapids, ia: The Mother Mosque Foundation, 1981), 7. 15 J.G.A. Pocock, “The Ideal of Citizenship since Classical Times,” in The Citizenship Debates: A Reader, ed. Gershon Shafir (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 35.

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the launch of the Popular Algerian Muslim Congress only to fall thereafter when the i­ nstitutions of ­politics became merely a “new maraboutism that was not selling amulets, barakas, paradise, and its delights, but one that was buying rights, citizenship and the moon with the ballot papers. Likewise, it was forgotten that right is but a corollary of duty and that a society can create its charter and its new social statutes only by changing its ‘spiritual attitude’.”16 At that point, “the idea [of islah] was banished and the idol seized power in Algerian public life.”17 What Qutb and Bennabi’s accounts share is a recognition that political citizenship is inadequate: Islamic justice requires a citizenry mobilised to claim justice in a more comprehensive sense and marshals the natural instincts of the ­(Muslim) people. One of the most significant works of political theory from this period ­followed the humiliating defeat suffered by the Arab states in 1967 was S­ adik al-ʿAzm’s Self Criticism After the Defeat. It has seldom been noted that this work offers a poignant critique of “citizenship” – or the lack thereof. In one key passage, al-ʿAzm cites a study published by the Institute for Palestine Studies about the refugees and the causes of their flight on the eve of the June War, which concludes that, because of the lack of social institutions, political organisations, and political parties working effectively among the masses, the Arab citizen falls, at the time of sudden danger, under the spontaneous sway of the tribal, behaving in accordance with its norms, and thus feels that his ties to his family or group are stronger than his ties to the “land,” and his connection to his tribe, daughters, and relatives is more significant and important than his connection to the threatened “soil of the fatherland.”18 Al-ʿAzm cites what he terms a “hierarchy of priorities” that begins with the family and leaves the responsibility of the citizen in the far distance: We know how the Arab citizen living in the cities behaved on the eve of the June War when he anticipated the possibility of shortages of some merchandise and foodstuffs offered in the market. Each one of us rushes before all others, and at the expense of every other citizen, to the market, in order to buy and hoard the greatest amount possible of merchandise and foods so that he can afterwards relax considering that he has managed to ensure the needs of his close family even at the expense of the 16

Malek Bennabi, The Question of Ideas in the Muslim World (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2003), 64, 65. 17 Bennabi, The Question of Ideas in the Muslim World, 65. 18 Sadik al-ʿAzm, Self-Criticism After the Defeat (London: Saqi, 2012), 51.

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nourishment of others and their deprivation. In truth, this citizen brags among his relatives about his shrewdness and slyness in managing here a sack of flour and there so many kilograms of bread in such grave hours. As long as the family does well, all is well. As for the negative consequences of this type of behavior on the general state of nutrition in the country and on non-relatives whom we leave behind in our shrewdness in hoarding merchandise in our homes, this sort of consideration does not ­enter our narrow tribal horizons and does not speak to us in the hours of ­danger and need.19 Al-ʿAzm’s notion of citizenship invokes the values of common interest and s­ ocial justice over private interest and personal gain and bemoaning the lack of willingness to sacrifice for the greater good at a time of shared crisis. However, al-ʿAzm saves his sharpest critique for the failures of the regimes and their “intellectuals.” He takes to task the well-known Egyptian journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikel (1923-) for “rationalizing Arab failure and evading responsibility,”20 citing an article in which Heikel seems to admit that Egypt went into the war entirely unprepared and how this fact – as well as this intellectual’s knowledge of it underscores the broken nature of the contract between citizen and state: One ought not let this acknowledgment of the impossibility of an Arab victory casually pass by the attention of the Arab citizen, because behind it hides …a frightening truth about the relations and connections between the Arab masses and their leadership, political organizations, and communications services in the period following the French-­BritishIsraeli aggression in the Suez Canal. That is, the misled Arab popular masses were in one camp, and the regimes, organizations and institutions that should have represented them were isolated in another camp. In these awful circumstances, the defeat should come as no surprise.21 He concludes that “there can be no deep and long-lasting socialist revolution unless the formation of its citizens, its young, and its successive generations has the highest priority.”22

19 Al-ʿAzm, Self-Criticism After the Defeat, 51. 20 Ibid., 57. 21 Ibid., 72. 22 Ibid., 76.

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Ontological Commitments Regarding the Nature of the Self: Citizenship in the 1980 and 1990s

Debates over citizenship in the course of the two decades following the Islamic Revolution in Iran tended to focus on forging a more inclusive notion that heeded both the reality of a resurgent Islamism and the concerns many were raising about the impact of political projects aimed at Islamicising state and society might hold for non-Muslims, non-Islamists, women, etc. The main question was whether Islamists, should they gain power, would attempt to revive the notion of ahl al-dhimma, where non-Muslims paid tribute to Islamic government in exchange for “protection” and the right of some measure of ­autonomy, for example, to govern their own affairs in family and commercial law.23 A number of intellectuals associated with the Wasatiyya (Moderate Islamist) trend sought to reconcile modern notions of citizenship with traditional Islamic conceptions. As al-Qaradawi put it: “in modern terminology, dhimmis are ‘citizens’ [muwatinun] of the Islamic state. From the earliest period of Islam to the present day, they enjoy the same rights and carry the same responsibilities as Muslims themselves, while being free to practice their own faiths.”24 The Egyptian Islamist thinker Fahmi Huwaydi is often credited with being the first to clearly and explicitly reject the category of dhimmi in favour of full citizenship rights (huquq al-muwatana al-kamila) for non-Muslims.25 He argues that the dhimmi concept emerges in Islamic thought as a historically bound concept through a nonbinding hadith, leaving modern Muslims to conceptualize citizenship in a more inclusive manner that conforms to the requirements of equality and democracy. It is worth noting that the Moroccan political philosophy Abdelilah Belkeziz credits the Shiʿi thinker Muhammad Husayn alNaʿini (1856–1936) with having departed from the traditional dhimmi concept in favour of modern citizenship much earlier. According to Belkeziz “al-Naʿini deemed citizenship (al-muwatana) and not religion to be the cornerstone upon which political rights of the umma in an Islamic community, such as the Iranian one, are built.”26 While I am sure there are other contenders for first 23

24 25 26

This topic and period is dealt with in greater length in the first two chapters of Michaelle Browers, Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Non-Muslims in Islamic Society (Indianapolis: American Trust Publications, 2005), 12. Fahmi Huwaydi, Muwatinun la dhimmiyun (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1985). Abdelilah Belkeziz, The State in Contemporary Islamic Thought: A Historical Survey of the Major Muslim Political Thinkers of the Modern Era (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 2009), 62–63.

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to make such a move, alongside Huwaydi, it is clear that the dhimmi concept has proven problematic for modern Arab and Islamic political thought since at least the Nahda. In this period, even those who would d­ efend the idea, find themselves on the defensive. For example, the Egyptian p ­ hilosopher, Hasan Hanafi mourns the fact that “this concept of Jews and Christians as dhimmi has acquired in public opinion a derogatory meaning, that of ­second-class citizenship,” the original Islamic value that he claims undergirded the idea – “religious tolerance and inclusiveness” – is what must be reclaimed in the present.27 In his view, it is not Islam or Islamic values that have failed to provide for equal citizenship, but the obscuring of original Islamic values in the conflict between secular nation-states (which supplant religious identity with national identity) and “fundamentalists” who reconstitute an Islamic identity in opposition to both non-Muslims and a secular state. Other Islamic thinkers attempt to reconceptualise a notion of citizenship that is inclusive, yet Islamic in values and in contrast to the liberal individualism they associate with citizenship in the West. The writings of Abdessalam Yassine, the founder of Morocco’s Islamist al-Jamaʿa al-ʿAdl wa-l-Ishan (Justice and Spirituality Group), contain a significant critique of territorial nationalisms (and their forms of citizenship) as aspects of the notion of modernity that he is challenging. He reasserts a notion of Islamic citizenship, based not on “the artificial borders of nation-states that imprison Muslim people,” but instead on “Islamic notions of rights and duties.”28 Islamic values, he argues, are “radically opposed to the moral emptiness and nagging egoism of the ­individual that demands and consumes.”29 In other words, he sees modern ­notions of citizenship as embedded in materialism and individualism. Islamic citizenship, in contrast, he sees as articulating a citizenship based on acts of giving and altruism, charity and piety. Only these values, he argues, can form the basis of a new Islamic pact.30 This renewed interest in exploring the religious dimension of citizenship was not only taken up by Islamists, but also by Arab intellectuals associated with secular trends. This is particularly prevalent in works dealing with ­various aspects of “the heritage” (turath) or engaging the question of the relationship between “authenticity” (asala) and modernity, which included prominent 27

28 29 30

Hasan Hanafi, “Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society: A Reflective Islamic Approach,” in Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism, and Conflict, ed. Sohail H. Hashmi ­(Princeton: Princeton ­University Press, 2002), 63. Abdessalam Yassine, Winning the Modern World for Islam (Iowa City: Justice and Spirituality Publishing, 2000), 82, 83. Ibid., 114. Ibid., 115.

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Arab intellectuals, such as Tariq al-Bishri, Anwar ʿAbd al-Malik, Ahmad Sidqi al-Dajani, and Tayyib Tizini. John Donohue’s survey of popular and academic publications in Arabic during this period found an increasing interest in questions of cultural authenticity and a growing prominence granted to Islam in discussions of identity.31 The 1980s is also when Muhammad ʿAbid al-Jabri ­began a lengthy engagement with the question of how to instigate a process of modernisation that could take root in the Arab region and contribute to the fostering of rationality, democracy, and human rights. His 1980 work Nahnu wa-l-turath (Heritage and us) engages the question of the Arabs’ relationship to their intellectual tradition and introduces ideas that develop into a series of books focused on a critique of al-ʿaql al-ʿarabi, variously rendered in English as “the Arab intellect,” “the Arab mind,” “Arab reason,” or “Arab reasoning.” While al-Jabri’s writings of the period do not directly engage the question of citizenship, they are deeply concerned with the status of the subject and draw critical attention to how the religious permeates through intellectual, cultural, social, and political spheres directing the behaviour of the Arab citizen. As I have ­argued elsewhere, this preoccupation of Arab political thought with these questions of this time underscores the connection of Arab intellectuals with global discussions.32 Recall that in the 1980s “communitarians” such as Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Michael Sandel were challenging liberal notions of the unencumbered self and positing, in turn, a socially situated self, whose sense of identity remained bound up with certain values, beliefs, and practices. But the difference of context is important: where communitarians in the West were responding to “disenchantment” with the hegemony of liberal individualism, many Arab intellectuals were grappling with a broader and more complex crisis in thought and practice.

Citizenship and the Arab Uprisings

The Arab uprisings garnered almost immediate attention from democratic and critical theorists. The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek asserted: “It was ­immediately possible for all of us around the world to identify with it, to 31 32

John J. Donohue, “Islam and the Search for Identity in the Arab World,” in Voices of R ­ esurgent Islam, ed. John L. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 50–51. Michaelle Browers, “Post-Secularism and the ‘New Partisans of the Heritage’: Muhammad Abid al-Jabri and Arab Liberalism in the 1980s,” in Arab Liberal Thought after 1967: Old ­Dilemmas, New Perceptions, ed. Meir Hatina and Christoph Schumann (New York: ­Palgrave MacMillon, 2015), 135–151.

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­recognize what it was about, without any need for cultural analysis of the features of Egyptian society.”33 In fact, whereas in the pre-Arab Uprising history of Arab political thought accounted above, it is clear that many Arab intellectuals were studying, appropriating, responding and reacting to trends and ideas often associated with “the West,” what strikes one immediately about international response to the Arab Uprising is the extent to which it is inspired by so much critical and democratic theory in Europe and the United States. Žižek found within the uprisings a radical emancipatory core. French philosopher Alain Badiou saw “fascinating similarity between the riots in the Arab world and the 1848 ‘revolution’ in Europe” and proclaimed them to “possess a universal significance” and “prescribe new possibilities whose value is international.”34 In a 2012 work by American political theorist Michaele Ferguson, the example of Egyptian protesters is used to exemplify the author’s argument that democracy is best seen not as a form of government, embodied in institutions, but as world-building, intersubjective activity.35 In a 2013 work, American political theorists Samuel Chambers remarked that, to the extent that Egypt’s revolution did not merely express pre-existing interests, but constituted new ones, it was “most decidedly political” and “most distinctly democratic” in the French political philosopher Rancière’s sense.36 I should clarify that I do not mean to suggest that the Arab Uprisings actually does exemplify and embody the most novel ideas in recent democratic and critical theory – in other words, that these democratic and critical theorists somehow got it right. Although I agree with much of this literature I also think there is a problem with seeing in this moment what it is we have been waiting for and this becomes all the more apparent when it ceases to appear as such, when the hope of democracy gives rise to a fear of renewed authoritarianism. Neither do I wish to suggest that the uprising activists were spurred on by these democratic and critical theorists. Though it is certainly the case that some ­activists were referring to their uprising as “rhizomatic”37 and, as 33

34 35 36 37

Slavoj Žižek, “For Egypt, This Is the Miracle of Tahrir Square,” The Guardian (February 10, 2011). Online at http://www.theguardian.com/global/2011/feb/10/egypt-miracle-tahrir -square. Alain Badiou, The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings (London: Verso Books, 2012), 48, 93, 114. Michaele Ferguson, Sharing Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Samuel Chambers, The Lessons of Rancière (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 9. This characterisation is made by the Egyptian activist and political sociologist Aly ­El-Raggal in Linda Herrera, “Generation Rev and the Struggle for Democracy: Interview with Aly El-Raggal,” Jadaliyya (October 14, 2011), online at http://www.jadaliyya.com/ pages/index/2869/generation-rev-and-the-struggle-for-democracy_inte. The rhizome,

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I discuss below, more than a few were reading, listening to and responding to prominent critical intellectuals, such as Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek. Mulling over the uprisings and this theory does suggest parallels and commonalities and provides some opportunity to weigh the optimism and idealism of each literature against more recent events – and a newer pessimism against what I take to be significant in these new articulations of citizenship. These ideas were, in a sense, “in the air,” circulating among, shared by and passed between activists across the globe.

The “Inexistent” or “Part of No Part” Constituted as the Public/ People/Citizen

Common to so many of contemporary critical theory’s accounts of the ontological significance of the Arab Uprisings as a historical event is the appearance of something. The “inexistent,”38 in Badiou’s terms, or what Rancière designates “the part without part.” According to Rancière, “politics exists whenever the count of parts and parties of society is disturbed by the inscription of a part of those who have no part.”39 Consensus – or the enclosure of any political order – always leads to a residual: a part of the structure that finds it has no part of the “who.” In consensus, this part of no part of the whole can be managed or sacrificed, but it is never eliminated. And, on occasion, this part and the injustice it names demands that it is, in fact, the whole. In Badiou’s thinking, naming is central to the power of the state’s capacity to represent being. The capacity of identitarian naming of citizens points to certain excess people among the state. These people “who are present in the world but absent from its meaning and decisions about the future” are what he calls the “inexistent.”40 The event, the historical riot, poses a rupture to this regime of identitarian

a collection of connected yet heterogeneous components that constantly change and ­resist organization and chronology, was developed as a political-philosophical concept by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (­Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987) and has since been utilised in a n ­ umber of works of political theory. El-Raggal refers specifically to Michael Hardt and  ­Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: ­Penguin, 2004). 38 Badiou, The Rebirth of History, esp. 56, 64, 67–71. 39 Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of ­Minnesota Press, 2004), 123. 40 Badiou, The Rebirth of History, 56.

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representation by presenting an inexistent that is seeking to ­identify with a generic that is outside the state’s ability to represent. However, the riot is only able to produce what he terms a “truth” if it is able to put forth a genericity that confronts identitariarn objectification and separation through naming. Badiou captures this in his claim that “in Egypt the people who had rallied in the square believed they were Egypt; Egypt was the people who were there to proclaim that if, under Mubarak, Egypt did not exist, now it existed, and them with it.”41 We saw this in the waving of national flags and the lack of symbols associated with parties or religious sects – or, in the latter case, in the intentional combining of religious symbols as an assertion of a common cause and refusal to be divided. We heard and read the various versions of slogans announcing “we are Egypt” and “we are Tunisia.” We see this in the Egyptian activist-blogger Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s claim that “Tahrir is a myth that creates a reality in which we’ve long believed”42 and the Egyptian scholar Adel Iskandar’s claim that the “corpus politicus (“body politic”) became the true anatomy and physiology of the public.”43 Activists’ references “the Republic of Tahrir” similarly suggests a reconstitution of liberated body politic in the space occupied by the protesters. Salwa Ismail’s brilliant account of how Syrian activists used songs and chants in their protests in order to “re-imagine and perform the nation”: “acts of protest have unfolded as enactments of the imagined nation freed and recovered from the rule of the al-Asad family.”44 Many protesters recall their protest activity as not just an interaction between citizens and the state but as an interaction of citizens with one another. One is struck at how, even as the uprising in Syria degenerated into a civil war activists continued – and c­ ontinue – to resist disunity and sectarianism through the unfurling of ­banners ­proclaiming that “we are Syria.” One image from Masyaf, near Hama, particularly stood out. A large banner proclaiming “I am Syria” stood above the claiming of all the following groups as part of the “I” of that “Syria”: Sunni, Shiʿi, Druze, ʿAlawi, Ismaʿili, Kurdish, Christian, Assyrian, Circassian.

41 42 43 44

Ibid., 57. In Ahdaf Soueif, Cairo: My City, Our Revolution (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012), 190. Adel Iskander, Egypt in Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2013), 5. Salwa Ismail, “The Syrian Uprising: Imagining and Performing the Nation,” Studies in ­Ethnicity and Nationalism 11 (2011): 547.

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Citizenship as Present Action: What One Does Rather than What One is (or is not)

In Michaele Ferguson’s words, we need to reconceptualise our understanding of the demos of democracy “as the product of human imagination and therefore as a matter of the intersubjective human activity of world-building.”45 In this sense, the people in the street stressed a vision of citizenship understood in terms of present political freedom rather than institutions to come through their collective agency. For Rancière, it is in these movements of revolution, “where liberty and equality would no longer be represented in the institutions of law and state, but embodied in the very forms of concrete life and sensible experience” that we see “real” democracy.46 The French Tunisian thinker Mehdi Belhaj Kacem directly asserts a commonality between the Tunisian Revolution and the ideas of Rancière, in that it was a revolution carried out directly by the “people” who wrote their own “indelible page of this history.”47 Or rather profoundly yet simply summed up by the graphic line graffiti artist Keizer spray-painted on the walls of Cairo: “We are the leader we have been waiting for.”48 It is this leaderless, horizontal c­ haracter to the Arab uprisings that gives it what Aly al-Raggal deems it “­rhizomatic” character: “The Arab revolutions are rhizomatic struggles because they don’t have a clear chain of command or a single point of reference. They have been successful as small entities linking together. The rhizome is a complex form of interaction. Even groups that used to be in opposition to one another…are connecting.”49 Adel Iskandar notes how the peak of the Egyptian uprising is embodied in that moment when it “did not attempt to take over the main institutions of government and assert its triumph over the state. Rather, it simply asserted the stubbornness of human perseverance and liberty in the face of unbearable pain and agony. It did not try to undo the constitutional order with disorder, but rather respected the need to demand change and expected that its show of force would be enough to guarantee the legitimacy of these demands.”50 45 Ferguson, Sharing Democracy, 10. 46 Jacques Rancière, Hatred of Democracy (London: Verso, 2014), 3. 47 Alexander Galloway, “A Tunisian Renaissance: Interview with Mehdi Belhaj Kacem,” The Symptom (January 31, 2011), online at http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?page_id=1046. 48 Iskander, Egypt in Flux, 109. 49 In Linda Herrera, “Generation Rev and the Struggle for Democracy: Interview with Aly El-Raggal.” 50 Iskander, Egypt in Flux, 61.

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I­skandar argues for “an anarcho-syndicalism, a system of informal collective self-rule that supplants the state where it can no longer function.”51 Citing ­Badiou as a source for thinking through what he witnessed and participated in, he claims “politics as outside the framework of reconnecting bonds and ­chiasms or the search for a more representative and democratically accountable government….for Badiou as for Egypt, politics is about the meticulous ­unbinding of the democratic representative system.”52 On the other hand, Fawwaz Traboulsi asserts that what was so new about the now famous slogan, “the people want the downfall of the regime” ­(al-shaʿb yurid isqat al-nizam) was not just its distinction between people (shaʿb) and ­regime or system (nizam), but also the novelty of those very two components.53 According to Traboulsi, the discourse of civil society and state, which had become so prominent in the 1990s54 seemed to have given way to a new language of people and regime that, he claims, recalls the revolutionary stance of the national liberation movements of the 1970s. The slogan constructs an inclusive and equal notion of “the people” (in contrast to both civil society and things like sects or other social divisions). Here Traboulsi seems to agree with Iskander. However, Traboulsi also notes how this people call not for the downfall of the state (that is, not the institutions that govern and unite) but the downfall of the regime (the system of power in place, which would include not just authoritarian system, but also the neoliberal order that sustains it), a broader and radical call that, he argues, warrants our characterization of these uprisings as revolutionary.55

Hatred of Democracy?

Badiou maintains that the Arab revolts “are opening a sequence,” “stirring up and altering historical possibilities,” but they do so “by leaving their own ­context undecided.”56 Other theorists are less sanguine about the future possibilities, with some going so far in their purported concern for the state of the Arab masses as to haughtily dismiss everything they do and think. This brings 51 Iskander, Egypt in Flux, 144. 52 Ibid. 53 Fawwaz Traboulsi, al-Dimuqratiyya thawra (Beirut: Riyad al-Rayyis, 2012). 54 For more on 1990s Arab thought on civil society see Michaelle Browers, Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities (Syracuse: Syracuse ­University Press, 2006). 55 A similar claim is made by Hamid Dabashi, The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (London: Zed Books, 2012). 56 Badiou, The Rebirth of History, 38.

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to mind Rancière’s notion of “hatred of democracy,” which says that “there is only one good democracy, the one that represses the catastrophe of democratic civilization.”57 The “bad” democracy involves things like “an excess of democratic activity” that breeds “disorder.”58 Žižek, writing a bit later, stands out in particular for his more critical view of the Arab spring: “Unfortunately, it looks increasingly likely that the Egyptian summer of 2011 will be remembered as the end of the revolution, as the suffocating of its emancipatory potential. Its grave-diggers are the army and the Islamists….The losers will be the pro-Western­liberals…and, above all, the true agents of the Spring events; the emerging secular left, which has tried desperately to organise a network of civil society organisations, from trade unions to feminist groups.”59 More recently, in the Guardian, Žižek says “the ongoing struggle there is ultimately a false one. The only thing to keep in mind is that this pseudo-struggle thrives because of the absent third, a strong radical-emancipatory opposition whose elements were clearly perceptible in Egypt.”60 Egypt, in this assessment, possessed event-ness, even if only for a moment. In Žižek’s assessment of present Egypt, the third element no longer appears: Now that the Egyptian army has decided to break the stalemate and cleanse the public space of the Islamist protesters, and the result is hundreds, maybe thousands, of dead, one should take a step back and focus on the absent third party in the ongoing conflict: where are the agents of the Tahrir Square protests from two years ago? Is their role now not weirdly similar to the role of Muslim Brotherhood back then – that of the surprised impassive observers? With the military coup in Egypt, it seems as if the circle has somehow closed: the protesters who toppled Mubarak, demanding democracy, passively supported a military coup d’etat which abolished democracy … what is going on?61 Žižek’s point about the need for a third element is one many Arab intellectuals continue to make,62 as one might expect, his claim that the protesters have become “impassive observers” has provoked critical response. 57 Rancière, Hatred of Democracy, 4. 58 Ibid., 6. 59 Slavoj Žižek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously (London: Verso, 2012), 74–5. 60 Slavoj Žižek, “Syria Is a Pseudo-Struggle,” The Guardian (September 6, 2013), online at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/06/syria-pseudo-struggle-egypt. 61 Žižek, “Syria Is a Pseudo-Struggle.” 62 See, for example, the Tunisian researcher, Leyla Dakhli’s call for finding an approach to post-uprising Tunisian politics that both avoids the hyperbole of patriotic flag waving yet includes both the “anti-Islamic modern elite” and “a society that is more Islamicized.”

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The Egyptian activist and blogger Leil-Zahra Mortada deems Žižek’s remarks as “coprolalia” (the excessive and uncontrollable use of obscene language) of pseudo-leftists: “Žižek´s article is the perfect example of every European l­ eftist (prick) sitting in some bar drinking beer and talking about entire populations fighting in ways he only saw in books and movies.”63 Her more direct and elaborated response follows: To consider that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt were ever “surprised impassive observers” shows great ignorance. When were they “surprised impassive observers”?! When they met with Omar Suleiman even before Mubarak stepped down?? Or when they were playing on various fronts sending their youth to Tahrir Square while they were striking deals with scaf? Or when they were actively supporting and defending the same military regime that is killing them now? To consider that the “agents of Tahrir Square” are passively supporting the crimes of the military is another blatant sign of lack of touch with revolutionary reality. Or maybe it is all built on what is coming out in the European mainstream media? Activist groups and revolutionaries in Egypt, despite having suffered the brutality of Morsi’s regime, have been actively and loudly denouncing Sisi’s massacres. They too are worn out from the immense revolutionary weight yet still carrying out the not-so-glamorous tasks of dealing with the detainees, military trials, the injured, the housing problems, the families of the martyrs, sectarian violence, the attack on liberties, the writing of the constitution, the attack on women´s bodies and rights…and the list can go on longer than Žižek´s scheduled appearances on magazine covers. They are working day and night to stop the further division of their society, to fight against the stigmatization of even their enemies (Muslim Brotherhood) so that they can build a country where a woman can’t be arrested and tortured for wearing a veil and protesting for someone she believes was the democratically elected president. Even if this

63

“­Tunisian National Interest: Serving Whom?” Jadaliyya (September 23, 2013), online at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/14260/tunisian-national-interest_serving-whom. Similarly, the Lebanese journalist and activist Rahil Dandash notes how Egypt seems stuck in a painful dichotomy between religious and military authoritarianism. Rahil Dandash, “Shabab ma baʿd al-thawra,” Bidayyat 8–9 (Summer/Fall 2014), online at http:// www.bidayatmag.com/node/487. Leil-Zahra Mortada, “Coprolalia on Syria, European Pseudo-Leftists, and Zizek” (November 12, 2013), online at http://www.leilzahra.com/?p=642.

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ex-president has blood on his hands and favored neoliberal economical policies.64 The contemptuous tone of Mortada’s response demonstrates that it is meant to not only assert that foreign intellectuals both lack a genuine understanding of and have failed to fully engage the activists of the region about which they are espousing so much judgment, but also to assert a refusal to be either spoken for or down to by intellectuals merely watching from the sidelines (or while lounging in bed, as Žižek is in the two pictures of Žižek that Mortada chooses to accompany her blog). The Syrian activist, Yassin al-Haj Saleh commented on Žižek’s article, similarly noting how it reflected a lack of understanding, first of “how the Islamic faith can be a tool” both of oppression and of “emancipatory mobilization” and, secondly, of how the ability of religions to do so is abetted by “extreme political poverty in particular (no right to freely gather, even in private p ­ laces, no free speech or publishing).”65 But, “most importantly,” Saleh argues, is the damage such ill-informed analysis by prominent foreign intellectuals can do to the people struggling: “the stance of Žižek and others like him does not help secular Syrians who are struggling against the regime. In fact this position serves to weaken us, and to make both the regime and the Islamists stronger. In effect they are saying that people who are interested in mass emancipation have nothing to do with ‘pseudo-struggles’ and the right thing for them to do is to stay away from those struggles. This is irresponsible and insensitive to human suffering.” Thus, Salah too asserts that “the problem is not that such writers ignore something important about Syria, it is that they are ignorant of nearly everything about the miserable country.”66 At the very least, we must ask whether our celebration of a grand “ontological” and historical event, our surprise at appearances of “the void” or the 64 65

66

Mortada, “Coprolalia on Syria.” Danny Postel, Nader Hashemi, and Yassin al-Haj Saleh, “The Conscious of Syria: An Interview with Activist and Intellectual Yassin al-Haj Saleh,” Boston Review (March 12, 2014), online at https://www.bostonreview.net/world/postel-hashemi-interview-syrian-activist -intellectual-yassin-al-haj-saleh. The French Tunisian writer Mehdi Belhaj Kacem similarly notes: “It’s obvious that Badiou and Zizek… know absolutely nothing about the situation, although, in Badiou’s case, it’s truly spectacular: almost like Sarkozy he manages to talk about the Tunisian revolution as if it were no more than some ‘riots.’ He says: ‘maybe some interesting utterances will come out of this, let’s wait and see…’ He’s completely out of it. From where I sit, there are ‘interesting’ utterances absolutely everywhere.” In Galloway, “A Tunisian Renaissance: Interview with Mehdi Belhaj Kacem.”

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“inexistent” merely masks our ignorance and inattention to the more mundane ongoing struggles for freedom, democracy, justice. We must further think ­critically about our tendency to, at one moment, cheer events of a certain character – those, in Žižek’s words, where “it was immediately possible for all of us around the world to identify with it, to recognize what it was about, without any need for cultural analysis of the features of Egyptian society” (2011) – while, at the next moment, noting that it will never be enough. At the end of all this – and despite the period of counterrevolution, stalled revolutions, civil wars, so called “failed states” and violent assertions of “Islamic states” – here is what I take to be distinctive about the generation that brought us the Arab Uprisings and their (re)conceptualisation of the idea and practice of citizenship. It is not so much that their understanding of citizenship as only meaningful when justice and equality are sought in a more comprehensive sense than merely a liberal territorial, political notion of citizenship offers. It is not only their comprehension of citizenship as a struggle: earlier generations wielded related ideas in the struggle for independence, socio-economic reform, and in the name of various conceptions of justice. Rather, the distinctiveness of their notion of citizenship lies in their grasping of citizenship as action and of the citizen and people as constituted in the acting, of citizenship as an unfinished project that must be constantly reinvented and reinterpreted to remain, in Malik Bennabi’s words, “expressed ideas” that are both “genuine” and “efficacious.”67 Bibliography ʿAbduh, Muhammad. “Laws Should Change in Accordance with the Conditions of Nations.” In Modernist Islam 1840–1940: A Sourcebook, edited by Charles Kurzman, 50–61. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. al-‘Azm, Sadik. Self-Criticism After the Defeat. London: Saqi, 2012. Badiou, Alain. The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings. London: Verso Books, 2012.

67 Bennabi, The Question of Ideas in Muslim Thought. Bennabi’s distinguishes between “­impressed ideas,” archetypical or fundamental values around which a society’s cultural universe revolves, and “expressed ideas,” those ideas produced by a society and by which a society attempts to realize or actualize its impressed ideas. The latter can be facilitated by “borrowings” and “adoptions” from other historical contexts, so long as they are fully adapted by social actors to the needs and interests of their society.

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Bennabi, Malek. The Question of Ideas in the Muslim World. Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2003. Browers, Michaelle. Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006. Browers, Michaelle. Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Browers, Michaelle. “Post-Secularism and the ‘New Partisans of the Heritage’: Muhammad Abid al-Jabri and Arab Liberalism in the 1980s.” In Arab Liberal Thought after 1967: Old Dilemmas, New Perceptions, edited by Meir Hatina and Christoph Schumann, 135–51. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015. Chambers, Samuel. The Lessons of Rancière. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Dabashi, Hamid. The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism. London: Zed Books, 2012. Dakhli, Leyla. “Tunisian National Interest: Serving Whom?” Jadaliyya. ­September 23, 2013. Available at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/14260/tunisian-national -interest_serving-whom. Dandash, Rahil. “Shabab ma ba‘d al-thawra.” Bidayyat 8–9 (2014). Available at http:// www.bidayatmag.com/node/487. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Donohue, John J. “Islam and the Search for Identity in the Arab World.” In Voices of R ­ esurgent Islam, edited by John L. Esposito, 48–61. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Ferguson, Michaele. Sharing Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Galloway, Alexander. “A Tunisian Renaissance: Interview with Mehdi Belhaj Kacem”. The Symptom (January 31, 2011). Available at http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/ ?page_id=1046. Hanafi, Hasan. “Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society: A Reflective Islamic ­Approach,” in Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism, and Conflict, edited by Sohail H. Hashmi, 56–75. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin, 2004. Herrera, Linda. “Generation Rev and the Struggle for Democracy: Interview with Aly El-Raggal.” Jadaliyya (October 14, 2011). Available at http://www.jadaliyya.com/ pages/index/2869/generation-rev-and-the-struggle-for-democracy_inte. Hourani, Albert. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1983. Huwaydi, Fahmi, Muwatinun la dhimmiyyun. Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1985. Iskander, Adel. Egypt in Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2013.

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Žižek, Slavoj. “For Egypt, This Is the Miracle of Tahrir Square,” The Guardian (­February 10, 2011). Available at http://www.theguardian.com/global/2011/feb/10/ egypt-miracle-tahrir-square. Žižek, Slavoj. The Year of Dreaming Dangerously. London: Verso, 2012. Žižek, Slavoj. “Syria Is a Pseudo-Struggle.” The Guardian (September 6, 2013). Available at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/06/syria-pseudo -struggle-egypt.

chapter 12

Brothers and Citizens: The Second Wave of Islamic Institutional Thinking and the Concept of Citizenship Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen O brothers, O my sons and my daughters, O my brothers and my sisters, O my grandsons and my granddaughters, children of Egypt! The usage of preachers, for their sermons, is to say “O Muslims!” but me, I say in this Square, “O Muslims and Copts! O children of Egypt!” This is the day of the children of Egypt all together. It is not the day of the Muslims alone.1

∵ This is the Sermon of the Revolution: The well-known Islamist scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi on February 18, 2011, addressing two million Egyptians in Tahrir Square. Al-Qaradawi had been flown in from Qatar to deliver the first Friday sermon after the fall of Hosni Mubarak. It would take an occasion like this, and a preacher of the stature of al-­ Qaradawi, to make this remarkable break with established ritual and open with “O Muslims and Copts.” To al-Qaradawi, Egypt’s Christians and Muslims have proven themselves to be equal in the revolution. They are compatriots. But are they co-citizens? Yes, he says so; but while the Muslim citizenship seems to be a natural state, the Christian citizenship appears to be the result of achievement. And al-Qaradawi seems to be the authority who grants it to them, or at least announces it. He, after all, is their father, along with Egypt itself. As this chapter will argue, ikhwani (Muslim Brother) Islamism has come a long way towards democratic positions. But some democratic values have been embraced more wholeheartedly than others. In al-Qaradawi’s and the Ikhwan’s paternalistic democracy, sovereignty hardly rests with the individual citizen, but with the group of believers. Next to the formal political equality of the Egyptians, there is still an important division between Muslims and Christians. 1 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Khutbat Midan al-Tahrir, February 18, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Xe1nYUUguWE, accessed March 18, 2015. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_014

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And authority is still vested in those who know, those who are virtuous among you, and those who can lead. Al-Qaradawi’s sermon marks the culmination of a long march towards the acceptance of a democratic, republican political system. One month later, the Muslim Brotherhood established a political party, and ten months later the party won the first free elections in modern Egypt. The following year, in 2012, Mohammad Mursi of the Brotherhood and its party was elected president, and in December a new Constitution was adopted. Necessarily a work of compromise, it would still qualify as the first ikhwani Constitution. The triumph, however, proved short-lived. A year later, Mursi was removed from office by the army, in early 2014 a new Constitution was adopted, and the Muslim Brotherhood was declared a terrorist organisation. Where does this land the Islamist thinking on democracy and citizenship? At the time of writing, Allahu aʿlam, only God knows. But this is a question of great significance for the political future of the region. With most of its parliamentarians in prison, and a hardliner as the interim leader, there is the obvious risk that they abandon the belief in democratic institutions and values. ­Conversely, there is also the possibility that the oppression will make certain dimensions of politics become more apparent to them, as they realise that, contrary to expectations, they do not represent the aspirations of the majority of Egyptians. Notably, the protesters against the 2013 military coup have claimed to defend sharʿiyya, legitimacy, rather than defending the Shariʿa, as their traditional sloganeering would have it. Does that legitimacy now include the inalienable political rights of every citizen, irrespective of his or her ­religious – or in principle a-religious, or even anti-religious – convictions? When we talk about citizenship, we mainly think of the enjoyment of basic political and social rights, including the right to representation and participation in the state and governance. Underneath these rights, however, there must be an ingrained feeling of individual autonomy; a sense of entitlement and self-assurance that allows the citizen to freely exercise these rights. Here, I shall not pursue specific rights, but rather citizenship as such, and how it has been perceived and experienced. This chapter will reflect upon and discuss the specific difficulties faced by the democratising ikhwani tradition when faced with such a concept of citizenship. It will try to do so by taking a generational perspective of Islamist thinking.

From Enjoying Citizenship to Calling for it

Like their co-patriots, Islamists in the Arab World have been enjoying citizen rights for generations. Constitutions, such as the Ottoman Constitution of

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1876, defined such right and introduced the idea of parliamentary d­ eliberation, even if laws would still be promulgated by the sultan. What we may call the first generation of Islamic constitutional thinkers, the late 19th century reformers Muhammad ʿAbduh and ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, argued that a truly Islamic state is opposed to despotism (istibdad) in that even the ruler must be subjected to the rule of law, and is obliged to heed the views of experts in a consultation (shura). Later Islamist political organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and Syria built upon these notions, and their leaders participated in parliamentary elections in the 1940s. This participation in the political process was aimed at promoting Islamically oriented policies and “defending the Sharia.” Although in 1939 the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood adopted the slogan “Islam is religion and state” (al-islam din wa-dawla) it evinced little interest in the constitutional organisation of the state, or in the concept of citizenship. The organisation of the Brotherhood itself was also top-down, and emphasising the ideological training and discipline of the individual member, rather than his personal opinion and development. Under the one-party system of Gamal Abd al-Nasser (1954–70), and later the Baʿath Party in Syria (1963-now), the Brotherhood itself also strengthened its authoritarian discipline, if partly as a response to the regime repression. In the late 1950s Sayyid Qutb formulated a revolutionary, violent and avant-gardistic doctrine rejecting the idea of liberal democracy. These ideas were, however, never fully accepted in the Brotherhood, and after the death of Nasser and the re-introduction of a multi-party system by Anwar al-Sadat from 1976, the leadership of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood opted for a strategy of participation and inclusion in Egyptian parliamentary politics. The Brotherhood was not allowed to form a political party, but its members could run for other parties, and from 1990 they could run as individual candidates and then form an Islamic bloc in Parliament. In Syria, the Brotherhood had actually taken part in government in the late 1940s, and even its radical ideologist Saʿid Hawwa advocated a form of Islamic democracy with a bicameral political system.2 The Brotherhood was banned, but in the 2000s the exiled leadership also adopted a strategy of calling for democratic reforms in alliance with other oppositional forces. In both countries, this ideological embrace of democracy was met with scepticism from other committed democratic actors. Gradually, the leadership felt the need to clarify its position on democratic issues such as the role of women and non-Muslims, and a number of declarations were published that allow us to follow the development in ikhwani thinking.

2 Itzchak Weismann, “Democratic Fundamentalism? The Practice and Discourse of the ­Muslim Brothers Movement in Syria,” The Muslim World 100 (2010): 10.

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The Second Wave of Islamic Institutional Thinking

The pragmatic decision of the Brotherhood leadership to seek influence through participation predated any serious rethinking on the subject of citizenship. Yusuf al-Qaradawi recalls in his memoirs how in the 1970s there were two competing schools in the international organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood on the subject of shura: those who considered it solely as a consultative body to the ruler who could then proceed to issue a decree, and those who like al-Qaradawi considered the ruler to be bound by the majority opinion of the ahl al-hall wa -l-ʿaqd (the people who lose and bind).3 As these in al-Qaradawi’s understanding are the high ʿulama, the choice was between an autocratic and a sort of theocratic system. Al-Qaradawi also came in for severe criticism when in 1977 in a book he argued for the term “non-Muslims” in Muslim society instead of kuffar (unbelievers) or ahl al-dhimma (protected people).4 The event that triggered more serious reflection was the 1979 revolution in Iran and the ensuing constitution that established the political system of the Vilayet e-feqih. Suddenly, the Shiʿis of Iran had constructed a state structure which combined elected offices and representation with a drive to Islamise the country. This was attractive to some Sunni thinkers, although they would hold that a Sunni version could not privilege the ʿulama as much as the Islamic Republic of Iran did. These Sunni thinkers were all republican, and mainly Egyptian: Muhammad Salim al-ʿAwwa, Tariq al-Bishri, Fahmy Huweidi, Kamal Abu al-Magd and Muhammad ʿAmara. None of them were ʿulama, and several of them had a leftist or Arab nationalist background. Their published books on the organisation of a Sunni Islamic state have been analysed by Gudrun Krämer5 and Raymond Baker,6 among others. None of them were formal members of the Muslim Brotherhood, but they were an inspiration to it when, from the 1990s onwards, the Brotherhood itself began to embrace the idea of a “civil state with an Islamic reference.” To these thinkers, the true Islamic teaching provides a blueprint for a certain form of state. This state must be civil, meaning not theocratic (like in Iran), and not run by the military (like in some of the Arab republics). It must also be democratic; to these thinkers, shura means parliamentary democracy, 3 4 5 6

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Ibn al-qarya wa-l-kuttab, vol. 4 (Cairo, 2010), 42. Al-Qaradawi, Ibn al-qarya, 31. Gudrun Krämer, Gottes Staat als Republik (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 1999). Raymond Baker, Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 2003).

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and the Qurʾanic term for the people who decide, ahl al-hall wa -l-ʿaqd, are the parliamentarians. The inhabitants of the state all have voting rights and rights of representation, but as this is an Islamic state, only a Muslim can hold the presidency and the chief of staff. There are, however, differences between these thinkers, both in terms of argumentation and the limitations of nonMuslim citizen rights.7 Still, they adopt a formula of equal rights and duties for all citizens irrespective of their religious affiliation (la-hum ma la-na, wa ʿalayhim ma ʿalay-na, a hadith contested by radicals), at least if they are Christians. Moreover, despite their insistence on the claim that there is such a thing as an Islamic state, all operate with a functional difference between the state and religion, contrary to the classical slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood.8 Inspired by these thinkers is Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who for most of his life was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and later declined to become its leader.9 As a shaykh with significant scholarly authority, al-Qaradawi has to argue from within the tradition of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). That, on the other hand, is why he is more significant that the other thinkers; it is precisely his political concern for the “jurisprudence of reality” (fiqh al-waqiʿ), and his weekly program in the Al Jazeera satellite tv channel (aptly named “Shariʿa and Life”) that has made him “easily one of the most admired and best-known representatives of Sunni Islam today.”10 Al-Qaradawi, too, understands shura to mean parliamentary democracy, but he sees a risk that even Muslim parliamentarians may promulgate laws that contradict the teaching of Islam. In his Jurisprudence of the State in Islam, al-Qaradawi argues that the Islamic nature of the state must be secured through the vetting of parliament’s legislation by a corps of high ʿulama.11 Al-Qaradawi is keen to secure the political independence of the ʿulama – a clear reference to the situation in Egypt where the state controls alAzhar’s budget and the president nominates the Shaykh al-Azhar. This special role and authority of the ʿulama was rejected by the other “lay” representatives of the second wave, but was surprisingly adopted by the Muslim ­Brotherhood in its draft political party program of 2007.12 7 Krämer, Gottes Staat, 173–217. 8 Ibid., 164–165. 9 Husam Tammam, “Qaradawi and the Muslim Brothers,” in Global Mufti: The Phenomenon of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, ed. Bettina Gräf and Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen (London and New York: Hurst & Columbia up, 2009), 59ff. 10 Bettina Gräf and Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, “Introduction,” in Global Mufti, 1. 11 Yusuf al- Qaradawi, Min fiqh al-dawla fi-l-islam (Cairo: Maktabat al-Wahba, 1997), 31. 12 Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, “Egypt’s Ulama in the State, in Politics and in the Islamist ­Vision,” in The Rule of Law, Islam and Constitutional Politics in Iran and Egypt, ed. Said Arjomand and Nathan J. Brown (New York: suny Press, 2013), 294.

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What do the thinkers of the second wave have to say about citizenship? Not much. Beyond a willingness to consider equal political rights, with some limitations, their interest is with the feasibility of a specifically Islamic state and a commitment to the rule of law. To many Islamists, the very term for citizen, m ­ uwatin, has secularist overtones, as it stresses the watan, fatherland, as people’s primary identity and allegiance. To be sure, Secularists have considered the word muwatana (citizenship) as a bulwark against religious differential treatment. When in 2007, the article 1 of the Egyptian Constitution was amended to state that Egypt was a democratic state building on muwatana, it was widely seen as a counterbalance to article 2’s definition of Egypt as an Islamic state with a legislation based on the principles of the Islamic Shariʿa.13 The second wave Islamist thinkers have, however, come to embrace the term. Again, the last of them to do so was al-Qaradawi who in 2010 published a book Fatherland and Citizenship (al-watan wa-l-muwatana) from an Islamic perspective. Here he cautiously considers national belonging a natural human instinct that may be beneficial, as long as it is not exaggerated, and based on a reading of the so-called Medina Constitution (a covenant made ­between Muhammad and the people of Yathrib, according to the classical Muslim historians), al-Qaradawi considers all inhabitants of a Muslim country basically equal.14 He proposes to avoid the classical terminology of Christians as ahl aldhimma and employ the term “brothers” (as we saw in his speech from 2011).15 Citizenship here means the belonging, the sense of home and entitlement, and the aim of the book is to make non-Muslims belong in Muslim majority states, and make Muslims belong in non-Muslim majority states. Warren and Gilmore have demonstrated how al-Qaradawi, the Muslim scholar among the Islamist thinkers of the second wave, has struggled to find arguments in the Islamic tradition of doing away with the basic distinction in classical fiqh between believer and non-believer at the political level.16

13

Bruce Rutherford, “Surviving under Rule by Law: Explaining Ideological Change in Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood during the Mubarak Era,” in The Rule of Law, Islam and Constitutional Politics in Iran and Egypt, 256. 14 Yusuf al-Qaraḍawi, al-Watan wa-l-muwatana fi daw al-usul al-ʿaqdiyya wa-l-maqasid alsharʿiyya (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2010), 25. 15 Al-Qaradawi, al-Watan, 42. 16 David Warren and Christine Gilmore, “One Nation under God? Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s Changing fiqh of Citizenship in the Light of the Islamic Legal Tradition,” Contemporary Islam 8 (2014): 217–37, DOI 10.1007/s11562-013-0277-4.

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The Muslim Brotherhood on the Move

From the 1990s onwards, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood began to liberalise its views on several issues relating to citizenship. In 1994 it issued two documents clarifying its position towards women and Copts. These pamphlets drew heavily on the thinkers of the second wave.17 A decade later, when the Egyptian regime itself acknowledged a need for reforms, the Brotherhood made more substantial statements: The Reform Initiative in 2004,18 election programs in 200519 and 2007, and a party platform document (in two versions) in 2007.20 These documents restated the Brotherhood’s acceptance and support for equal political rights for women and Copts, but they also became increasingly critical of the role of the executive and made recommendations for a diminished role for the presidency, an invigorated role for the parliament and for and more consequent division of powers. Nevertheless, none of these documents would accept a Copt as president of Egypt, and they still considered the essential social role of the woman to be in the home and bring up the children. The pamphlets and later the programs were written by a small group of middle generation reformers. This observation points to a strategic move rather than an ideological reassessment. Why would the leadership of the Brotherhood go along with this redefinition of the state and citizenship? In the 1990s the strategy clearly helped distancing the Brotherhood from the militant Islamist uprising that was taking place, reassuring both the regime that could crush it and the other opposition forces which it wanted to unify. And in the 2000s the Brotherhood also discovered that its more democratic positions yielded more positive assessments in Western media and capitals. But as Bruce Rutherford has pointed out, a theory of political incentives must be supplemented by other explanations, especially given the fact that the B ­ rotherhood 17 18 19

20

Bruce Rutherford, Egypt After Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World (Princeton: Princeton up, 2009), 97–98. http://www.aljazeera.net/specialfiles/pages/a7d9e130-0f09-4b77-bbb0-ee07dd61afd3, accessed July 10, 2015. http://www.ikhwanwiki.com/index.php?title=%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D8%B1 %D9%86%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%AC_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%86%D8 %AA%D8%AE%D8%A7%D8%A8%D9%8A_%D9%84%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%AE %D9%88%D8%A7%D9%86_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B3%D9%84%D9%85 %D9%8A%D9%86_2005, accessed July 10, 2015. http://www.ikhwanwiki.com/index.php?title=%D8%A8%D8%B1%D9%86%D8%A7 %D9%85%D8%AC_%D8%AD%D8%B2%D8%A8_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D 8%AE%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%86_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B3%D9%84 %D9%85%D9%8A%D9%86, accessed July 10, 2015.

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was never going to get power or even influence in Egypt’s authoritarian political system.21 Moreover, in parliament the Brotherhood was reluctant to work on the improvement of women’s social and juridical equality, and even took a defensive stand on issues such as Female Genital Mutilation. Hence, the Brotherhood was democratically inclined, and interested in curbing the power of the state, but more often than not the aim was to “defend Egyptian values” against norms of universal socio-political civic rights, even when ­Islamic authorities such as al-Qaradawi made it clear that Islamic law allowed these values and practices to be reformed.22 Several scholars have pointed to a rivalry inside the Brotherhood, partly generational, between a smaller group of reform-minded public figures, who often took their cues from the thinkers of the second wave, and other more powerful and reclusive groups, some of whom beholden to the anti-democratic ideology of Sayyid Qutb, and others influenced by a growing Salafi trend in Egyptian society. In the summer of 2010 elections for the ­Egyptian Brotherhood’s highest executive body, the Maktab al-Irshad, confirmed that the Liberal group was the weakest. A somewhat parallel has taken place in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, but in very different circumstances. Banned since the 1950s, and completely suppressed after 1982, the group only had sympathisers inside the country, whereas the leadership and formal organisation was based in Europe. Exposed to European political realities, and threatened with extinction, in the early 2000s the group reached out to other oppositional parties set out on a revaluations of its political ideology. In a document entitled “The Political Project for the Future of Syria” it recognised the fundamental idea of the second wave that God’s sovereignty allows for man to create parliaments and legislation, as man is God’s representative (khalifa) on earth. It also embraced the concept of the civil state, and in principle equal citizenship for Syria’s religiously diverse population.23 However, like in Egypt, collaboration with other opposition forces proved difficult and marred by mutual suspicion, and in the 2010 internal elections the reformist Ali al-Bayanuni was defeated by the more uncompromising ­Muhammad Shaqfa. Hence, new ideas of equal citizenship had been introduced in both the Egyptian and the Syrian Brotherhood. But when revolution came, none of

21 22 23

Rutherford, “Surviving under Rule by Law,” 249–278. Ibid., 260. “The Political Project for the Future of Syria: A Vision of the Muslim Brotherhood Group in Syria,” http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=5804, Chapters 1 and 4, accessed March 16, 2015.

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them was prepared, and their leadership had weak ties to other political forces and did not inspire trust.

Revolutions and Rethinking Citizenship

When President Mubarak of Egypt was overthrown on February 11, 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood stood to gain as the most formidable opponent throughout his reign. On the other hand, new forces had appeared and made the revolution happen, and the Brotherhood had accepted the new transition plan of the military which would lead to open elections within few months. ­Consequently, in March the Brotherhood announced the establishment of a political party, called the Freedom and Justice Party. Within a few weeks, the Freedom and Justice Party (fjp) produced a detailed program, largely building upon the earlier documents of the reformist wing, but taking these ideas further in this new situation where they would no longer be dead paper. In the general elections of December 2011 and January 2012, the Freedom and Justice Party won almost 50 per cent of the votes and could legislate with the support of other Islamist parties to the left and right. However, the parliament was dissolved by court order after only four months which revealed little about the future directions of legislation in Egypt. Things went very fast after the revolution, and the transition from jamaʿa (society) to hizb (party) was so smooth that it was revealing. The emblem of the Freedom and Justice Party, with a dove signalling freedom, in contrast to the society’s emblem of a Qurʾan defended by swords and an oath of allegiance, give an idea of the scale of the move. The name, too, was revealing; for while justice was a long term concern and demand of the Brotherhood, freedom was not; it smacked of moral laxity and of the Western Liberalism that the Brotherhood has always opposed. The party itself, though, looked more recognisable: its leaders were all well-known brothers appointed by the Brotherhood itself. Protesting against this top-down management of the new party, a large group of the Brotherhood’s talented younger members stepped back and established their own party, the Egyptian Current (al-Tayyar al-Masri). The platform of the Freedom and Justice Party celebrates political freedom, civil rights and parliamentary politics as in accordance with Islam’s principles. Among these civil and political rights is equal citizenship for all: The State is based on the principle of citizenship, where all citizens enjoy equal rights and duties guaranteed by law in accordance with the

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­ rinciples of equality and equal opportunities without discrimination p because of religion or race (Chapter 2, Part 1).24 Also the equality of women is assured, albeit “consistent with the values of Islamic law, maintaining the balance between their duties and rights” (­ Chapter 2, Part 2). And freedom of religions appears to mean freedom to belong to one of the three “heavenly” religions, but not necessarily other religions, or no religions at all. Nevertheless, the two all-dominant religions of Egypt, Islam and Christianity, are placed on an equal footing – a departure from traditional Islamic, and Muslim Brotherhood, thinking. Egyptians are citizens with equal rights, but they are citizens belonging to the religions accepted by Islam. And these religions have a lot in common; they agree that prophets must not be insulted, women should be “respected” and national culture should be cleansed of imported “filth.”25 Muwatana then, has moved from being a formal prerogative of the Muslims to being shared by Muslims and Christians – but in a conservative, and sometimes illiberal, variety. This embrace of the concept of citizenship to be shared with the Christians is underlined in the new Constitution, written almost solely by Islamists and Salafists and adopted in a referendum in December 2012. The concept of citizenship has been moved to Article 6, which stresses equal rights and duties in a pluralistic democracy. Before that, however, Islam (Article 2) and Christianity and Judaism (Article 3) are given their due. In between the state and the individual is the religious community (milla) which also holds rights and defines the state. Article 2 reiterates from earlier constitutions the request that the principles of the Shariʿa are the basis of legislation, but now an article 219 specifies and narrows the possible interpretations of this request, and a group of Muslim scholars from the al-Azhar University is tasked with formulating the overall interpretations of the Shariʿa (Article 4). Moreover, at the end of the chapter on citizen rights, Article 81 reads: Rights and freedoms pertaining to the individual citizen shall not be subject to disruption or detraction.

24 25

Freedom and Justice Party Election Program 2011, http://kurzman.unc.edu/files/2011/06/ FJP_2011_English.pdf. Mathias Rohe and Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, “The Ambivalent Embrace of Liberalism: The Draft Program of the Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt,” in Arab Liberalism after 1967, ed. Meir Hatina and Christian Thuselt (London: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2015), 195–214.

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No law that regulates the practice of the rights and freedoms shall include what would constrain their essence. Such rights and freedoms shall be practiced in a manner not conflicting with the principles pertaining to State and society included in Part 1 of this Constitution.26 The last three lines, added to the article in this Constitution, subsumes all rights to the overall principles of the state as listed in the first 13 articles of the Constitution, including the definition of the state as Islamic, the legislation as being based on Islamic principles, and the commitment of the state to defend vaguely defined “family values” (Article 10) and “public morality” (Article 11). More than in the Freedom and Justice Party election program, then, the Constitution of 2012 subsumes citizen rights under religious provisions, and tasks the state with upholding and imposing a specific religious set of norms and values upon its citizenry. The above-mentioned stipulations gave rise to protests, and after the military take-over in 2013 a new Constitution was passed in January 2014 abolishing these specifically Islamic injunctions (but introducing or strengthening other limits to civic rights in the process).

The Syrian Brotherhood and Citizenship

A parallel development can be seen in the Syrian case. As mentioned above, the Muslim Brotherhood’s first serious reform document, A View to the Future issued in 2004 had introduced the concept of citizenship, and recognised the religiously diverse nature of Syrian society. There was, however, a strong emphasis on the religious identity of the individual citizen and state building was seen as springing from the religious communities in peaceful cooperation. Now the revolution forced the Brotherhood to signal complete acceptance that it would be just one party among others, which might not accept the same religious framework. In February 2012, in the run-up to an important meeting of Western and Arab supporters of the revolutionary forces, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood gave in to the pressure to clarify its political position and issued a covenant for its work for a future Syrian civil state that was characterised as 2. A democratic, pluralistic state [that operates on the principle of] transition of power, based on the loftiest [ideals] that modern human

26

The Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt (2012), http://www.sis.gov.eg/newvr/ theconistitution.pdf.

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thought has achieved. [A state] with a parliamentary republican regime, in which the people elect its representatives and rulers in free, fair, and transparent elections. 3. A state [based on] citizenship and equality, in which all citizens are equal regardless of their ethnicity, faith, school of thought, or [political] orientation. [A state] based on the principle of citizenship, which is the basis for rights and duties, and in which every citizen can attain the highest positions based on [one of] two principles: elections or [personal] qualifications. Furthermore, [a state in which] men and women are equal in human dignity and legal capacity, and [in which] the woman enjoys her full rights.27 Note the avoidance of Islamic language. The Brotherhood accepted an essentially religiously neutral state where they could establish an Islamic party, just like others could establish parties on other ideological bases. And they knew full well that the majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims, and many are socially conservative. In their assessment, a democratic Syria would secure the Brotherhood significant influence, if not power, as had been demonstrated in Egypt and Tunisia after the revolutions. The concept of muwatana had come full circle; from being a means for secular political forces to oppose the designs of Islamists for an Islamic state, it was now considered by Islamists an integral part of the state they wanted. A democratic state would give room for individuals and groups to pursue the ­individual and collective life they wanted – and that would include Islamic ideals that could be pursued by Islamist parties. It is, however, not inconceivable that, had the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria found itself in a situation like the one in Egypt where they and their allies would form the majority in a constitutional assembly, it would also have opted for a state that was not only Islamic in definition, but also in its architecture and its policies, as understood by the Islamists themselves.

And Back to the Islamist Thinkers

The Islamist thinkers of the second wave were sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, but also critical of its conservatism it was they, after all, who formulated the idea of equal citizenship, based on a new reading of the ­Medina Constitution. Although respected and publishing freely in the Mubarak era, 27

“Syrian Muslim Brotherhood: Pledge and Charter on Syria,” http://carnegieendowment .org/syriaincrisis/?fa=48390, accessed March 16 2015.

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they were jubilant in February 2011 when the revolution succeeded, and in March one of them, Tariq al-Bishri, was appointed head of a commission which prepared for constitutional amendments that could pave the way for a fair election law. Another of them, Muhammad Salim al-ʿAwwa, was a candidate in the first presidential elections, and briefly participated in the constitutional assembly. When Mursi came to power, most of them were supportive, and the journalist Fahmy Huweidi actively defended president Mursi’s November 2012 decree granting himself immunity from legal oversight.28 Since the military takeover in July 2013, they have continued living in Egypt and writing, albeit cautiously, and Huweidi was barred from leaving the country. The odd man out once again is shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. After his sermon in Tahrir Square he engaged in the revolutions in Libya, Yemen and Syria, calling for their presidents to step down (or even get killed). But not the uprising in Bahrain, which he denounced as a Shiʿi conspiracy, and in May 2013 he tried to mobilise the Sunni world against the Shiʿi support for president Assad of Syria.29 Sunni Islamist power, rather than the power of the people, seemed to be the goal. This also became evident in his unflinching support for the Mursi government. After the military takeover in 2013, al-Qaradawi was a vocal critic of the new ruler, general al-Sisi. When in 2014 he also criticised Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for their financial support to al-Sisi (who was now elected president of Egypt), these countries responded by withdrawing their ambassadors from Doha. Soon afterwards Qatar seems to have banned him from preaching in order to mend fences with its powerful neighbours. What is important here is that al-Qaradawi and his allies in the International Union of Muslim Scholars not only supported the revolutions with sermons and statements, but also with publications on a new fiqh centered upon the relationship between citizen and state. Adopting the term “fiqh of the revolution,” the gist of the idea is that rules of jurisprudence that are normally valid may be temporarily discarded for the sake of the higher interests of the 28

29

http://www.mbc.net/ar/programs/monashazly/qadaya/articles/%D9%81% D9%87%D9%85%D9%8A-%D9%87%D9%88%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9% 8A-%D9%84%D9%80-%D8%AC%D9%85%D9%84%D8%A9-%D9 % 8 5 % D 9 % 8 1 % D 9 % 8 A % D 8 % A F % D 8 % A 9 - - - % D 8 % A8%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%84-%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%B3%D9% 8A-%D9%83%D9%84%D9%87%D8%A7-%D9%83%D9%88%D8%A7%D8% B1%D8%AB.html#comment%7Clist, accessed March 19, 2015. A detailed account of al-Qaradawi’s words and actions in the years after the revolution is provided by David H. Warren, “The ʿUlamaʾ and the Arab Uprisings 2011–13: Considering Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the ‘Global Mufti’, between the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Legal Tradition, and Qatari Foreign Policy,” New Middle East Studies 4 (2014): 2–33.

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u­ mma.30 Having always promoted the idea that fiqh must serve the community of believers al-Qaradawi has nevertheless considered this general p ­ rinciple of al-maslaha al-ʿamma (public interest) as a supplementary guideline, clearly subsumed under the general texts and rulings.31 With the fiqh al-thawra, however, there appeared to be much more leeway for broad considerations of the interest of the umma. And yet, when in June 2013 al-Qaradawi came to Cairo and witnessed the unpopularity of Mursi he made an appeal through his programs to the Egyptians that it was unlawful to depose him. And when the military actually took power, al-Qaradawi in a fatwa denounced this, arguing firstly that, from a political point of view Mursi was elected and must remain in office until the next elections, and secondly, from an Islamic legal point of view that sedition is only defensible if the ruler renounces his faith or commands his subjects to act against it.32 As pointed out by David Warren, this last traditional quietist argument stands in contrast to the creativity and utilitarianism displayed by al-Qaradawi two years earlier when he promoted the idea of a fiqh of the revolution.33 Conclusion This chapter has outlined how the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria in a period of authoritarian rule moved towards more inclusive and democratic visions of society, but ultimately failed – or were never given the chance – when the Arab Uprisings ushered in an era of free elections. At the time of writing in the spring of 2015 the Brotherhood in both Egypt and Syria is struggling to survive what they term the “ordeal” (al-mihna), feeling that, once again, God is testing their steadfastness. To some of the brothers, the decision to adopt a new constitutional thinking was probably merely a strategic choice, but to others it must have been a true conviction. Whatever the motives might be, the documents of the Egyptian and Syrian Brotherhoods undeniably affirmed a new understanding of how an Islamic state must be organised. These documents were written by reformist brothers, but their ideas came from a small 30 31

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Warren, “The ʿUlamaʾ and the Arab Uprisings,” 12. David L. Johnston, “Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s Purposive Fiqh: Promoting or Demoting the Future Role of the Ulama?” in Maqasid al-Shariʿa and Contemporary Muslim Reformist Thought: An Examination, ed. Adis Duderija (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 39–72. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Fatwat taʿyid al-raʾis al-muntakhab, July 24, 2013. http://iumsonline .org/ar/default.asp?menuID=6&contentID=6666. Warren, “The ʿUlamaʾ and the Arab Uprisings,” 24.

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group of Islamist writers whom I have called the second generation of Islamic constitutionalists. Writing from the time of the Iranian revolution of 1979, these men believed that a Sunni Islamic state would have to be a parliamentary democracy that would establish the rule of law, checks and balances of the powers, and something coming close to equal political citizenship for men and women, and Muslims and non-Muslims. Not all Islamists would agree. But the second wave of Islamic constitutionalists were also of a generation who believed in a strong and centralized state, anti-Imperialist, an enemy of Israel and a defender of Islam and the Muslims. Their interest lay with the strength of this state and its legitimacy in the eyes of its people as a reviver of the greatness of Islamic civilization. Like the first generation they were opposing “tyranny” (istibdad) with “justice” (ʿadl), and not with freedom. They believed in a unified and strong popular will. The secular Arab ruling republicanism was, in their eyes, unjust, mainly because it imposed its Secularism upon a people who largely wanted to live a pious life in a Muslim society. Their concern, then, was with the people and its will, not with the individual and his or her freedom, including the freedom to live as he pleases and believe what he wants to believe. Citizenship, for them, was first of all a question of equality in rights and duties: the right to live in a just society, and the duty to live by its “values.” With time, they managed to find ways to include Christians in the citizenry of the Islamic state. But they were thinking of Christians as a group, and excluding other, not recognized groups of believers. In November 2014 I met two of the second generation of Islamic constitutional thinkers in Beirut. Muhammad Salim al-ʿAwwa and Tariq al-Bishri were understandably depressed over the counter-revolution and the new authoritarian conditions in Egypt. Although they were still engaged in writing (and alʿAwwa was one of the lawyers of president Mursi) they are also quite old. Tariq al-Bishri was 81, and al-ʿAwwa, the youngest of the group, was 71. Al-Qaradawi was 89 and, though still active, politically a spent force. He, in particular, had revealed the limits to his understanding of citizenship rights. The question, then, is: will there be a third generation of Islamic Constitutional thinkers who will shift the focus from state paternalism to citizen autonomy, from the will of the people to the freedom and rights of the individual? If the 1979 Iranian revolution inspired new Sunni constitutional thinking of a certain ideological hue, will the much more liberalist slogans of the Arab revolutions of 2011 inspire constitutional thinking on the part of a younger Islamist generation to match? I think that there is reason to expect such new thinking, again not from inside the Brotherhood, but perhaps from the broader Islamist-leaning current in the Arab World which never felt at ease with the authoritarian tendencies of the Muslim Brotherhood. The people who ran

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I­ slamist websites such as IslamOnline, or the younger brothers who sided with the revolution, such as the Egyptian Current group, or the group behind the al-Arabi tv (launched in January 2015 in London). One of the themes that was beginning to be explored already prior to the Arab Uprisings was taking the notion of the “civil state” (al-dawla a­ l-madaniyya) beyond the confines of the second generation (who used it to distance the Islamic state from a theocratic and a military state, but also from a secular state), and considering the Islamic state a secular state with certain modifications. This has more or less been the outcome of the Tunisian constitutional process, but it has also been endorsed by Ennahda Party and its main thinker, Rachid al-Ghannouchi. Similar efforts have been made by the younger Islamist thinker Jasser Auda who in his book Between Sharia and Politics: Questions for the Post-Revolutionary Phase posits that the religious sphere and the civil sphere have significant overlaps.34 Both al-Ghannouchi and Auda are members of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, and their writings carry weight in Islamist circles. This cautious embrace of secularism makes for a more flexible approach to some of those Shariʿa issues that have been hindering an embrace of equal citizenship for Muslims and non-Muslims, in that the Islamic state is defined less by its adoption of specific items of legislation, and more with a broader approach focusing on public interest and the broader “intentions” (maqasid) of the Shariʿa. And there is a certain acceptance that some features of Islamic law, for instance the so-called hudud punishments, may not be implemented due to resistance by parts of the population, including­ Muslims.35 This is a small sign of acceptance that authority could rest with the individual citizen, also when it comes to formulating what the Shariʿa should mean today. Bibliography Awda, Jasser. Bayna al-shariʿa wa-l-siyasa: Asʾila ila al-marhala ma baʿd al-thawra. Beirut: al-Shabbaka al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Abhath wa-l-Nashr, 2012. Baker, Raymond. Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists. London: Harvard University Press, 2003. Egypt Constitution 2012: http://www.sis.gov.eg/newvr/theconistitution.pdf.

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Jassar Auda, Bayna al-shariʿa wa-l-siyasa: Asʾila ila al-marhala ma baʿd al-thawrat (Beirut: al-Shabbaka al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Abhath wa-l-Nashr, 2012), 69–80. 35 Auda, Bayna al-shariʿa wa-l-siyasa, 76–77.

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Freedom and Justice Party Election Program 2011. http://kurzman.unc.edu/files/2011/06/ FJP_2011_English.pdf. Accessed March 16 2015. Johnston, David L. “Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s Purposive Fiqh: Promoting or Demoting the Future Role of the Ulama?” In Maqasid al-Shariʾa and Contemporary Muslim ­Reformist Thought: An Examination, edited by Adis Duderija, 39–72. New York: ­Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Krämer, Gudrun. Gottes Staat als Republik. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 1999. Al-Qaradawi, Yusuf. Ghayr al-muslimin fi-l-mujtamaʿ al-islami. Cairo: Maktabat Wahba, 1985. Al-Qaradawi, Yusuf. Min fiqh al-dawla fi-l-islam. Cairo: Maktabat al-Wahba, 1997. Al-Qaradawi, Yusuf. al-Watan wa-l-muwatana fi daw al-usul al- ʿaqdiyya wa-l-maqasid al-shari ʿiyya. Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2010. Al-Qaradawi, Yusuf. Khutbat Midan al-Tahrir. February 18, 2011. https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=Xe1nYUUguWE. Accessed March 19, 2015. Al-Qaradawi, Yusuf. Fatwat ta ʿyid al-raʾis al-muntakhab. July 24, 2013. http://iumsonline .org/ar/default.asp?menuID=6&contentID=6666 Accessed March 19, 2015. Rohe, Mathias, and Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen. “The Ambivalent Embrace of Liberalism: The Draft Program of the Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt.” In Arab Liberalism after 1967, edited by Meir Hatina and Christian Thuselt, 195–214. London: Palgrave/ Macmillan, 2015. Rutherford, Bruce K. Egypt after Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009. Rutherford, Bruce K. “Surviving under Rule by Law: Explaining Ideological change in Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood during the Mubarak Era.” In The Rule of Law, Islam and Constitutional Politics in Iran and Egypt, edited by Said Arjomand and Nathan J. Brown, 249–278. New York: SUNY Press, 2013. Scott, Rachel. The challenge of Political Islam: Non-Muslims and the Egyptian State. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Skovgaard-Petersen, Jakob. “Egypt’s Ulama in the State, in Politics and in the Islamist Vision.” In The Rule of Law, Islam and Constitutional Politics in Iran and Egypt, edited by Said Arjomand and Nathan J. Brown, 279–302. New York: SUNY Press, 2013. Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. Pledge and Charter on Syria. 2012. Translated in http:// carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=48390. Accessed March 16, 2015. Tammam, Husam. “Qaradawi and the Muslim Brothers.” In The Global Mufti, edited by Bettina Gräf and Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, 43–69. London & New York: Hurst & Columbia University Press, 2009. Warren, David H. and Christine Gilmore, “One Nation under God? Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s Changing Fiqh of Citizenship in the Light of the Islamic Legal Tradition.” Contemporary Islam 8 (2014): 217–237.

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Warren, David H. “The ʿUlamaʾ and the Arab Uprisings 2011–13: Considering Yusuf alQaradawi, the ‘Global Mufti’, between the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Legal Tradition, and Qatari Foreign Policy.” New Middle East Studies 4 (2014): 2–33. Weismann, Itzchak. “Democratic Fundamentalism? The Practice and Discourse of the Muslim Brothers Movement in Syria.” The Muslim World 100 (2010): 1–16.

chapter 13

The Ambiguity of Citizenship in Contemporary Salafism Emin Poljarevic1

Religious Citizenship

The idea of citizenship (muwatana) for many, if not most, activist Salafis represents an expression of belonging to a community of believers within or without the confines of state borders. This communitarian understanding ties in with their particular theological understanding of religious, and therefore social and political, boundaries between communities – an us vs. them worldview – that implies that some of the rights and responsibilities of “believers” are not available to “unbelievers” or to the wrong kind of “believers.” Like many other fundamentalist religious movements2 (e.g. Haredi Jewish groups, the Vishva Hindu Parishad, or the Buddhist Madhatha movement, and even pre-modern Calvinists), Salafi groups are keen to separate friends from enemies and the righteous from the unrighteous.3 What is more, the particular Salafi worldview 1 Much of this chapter is based on research funding provided by the Wenner-Gren Foundation between 2013–2014. I also wish to thank Roel Meijer and Jay Willoughby for their comments, insights, and editing work. 2 John Bowker, “Fundamentalism,” in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, ed. John Bowker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Among the many definitions of Salafism is the following: “Salafism: A puritanical movement in Islam that emphasizes a conservative and literalist interpretation of scriptural sources. Literally followers of the salaf as-salih, or ‘pious predecessors’, Salafis emphasize exclusive reliance on the teachings of the early Muslims closest to the Prophet Muhammad. Classical Salafism is concerned almost exclusively with issues of creedal purity and the authenticity of scriptural sources, but in recent years Salafism has become cross-fertilised with overtly political groups.” See also, The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Muslim Networks and Movements in Western Europe” (Washington dc: Pew Research Center, 2010); R. Meijer, ed., Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement (New York: Hurst, 2009), xiii–xiv; Emin Poljarevic, “In Pursuit of Authenticity: ­Becoming a Salafi,” Comparative Islamic Studies 8 (2012): 140. 3 See Teun A. Van Dijk, Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach (London: Sage, 1994), 1–3. A social movement outlook can be found in Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 611–639, especially 619–622. A relevant overview of social movement theories and Islamic activism is presented in Quintan Wiktorowicz, “Introduction: Islamic Activism and Social © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_015

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ultimately produces strict, dichotomising sets of practices that perpetuate the continuous conflict between “friends and enemies,” wherein members of the in-group are on God’s side and those of the out-group are not.4 The method of separating these opposites permeates not only their religious and social activities, but also marks their political activism. For example, this impulse to differentiate is often based on a specific religioideological frame that determines the particular movement’s aims and scope of operations.5 In this case, the logic of differentiation is premised on the belief that religious communities are the foundation of a society and, by extension, a state or even a supra-state structure such as the Caliphate.6 As shown elsewhere, the Salafis’ primary activity is to invoke the Qurʾan as the primary source of both individual and collective identity.7 Such activities are usually demonstrated through their observable everyday practices, such as ankle-long robes for men and full face-veils for women, and a distinctive vocabulary, behaviour patterns, and orientation in the social space.8 Much has been said about both the religious and social roots of such practices.9

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Movement Theory,” in Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, ed. Quintan Wiktorowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 1–37. Richard Antoun, “Fundamentalism,” in The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion, ed. Bryan S. Turner (New York: Blackwell, 2010), 519–543. As will become clearer below, this impulse to differentiate is very strong among many Salafi groups. Despite their claim of doctrinal and practical unity, coherence, and consistency, selfproclaimed Salafis are part of a disjointed religious movement. See Quintan Wiktorowicz, “Anatomy of the Salafi Movement,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 29 (2006): 207–239; also Emin Poljarevic, “Les Salafistes and a French Reproduction of Certainties in a World of Uncertainties,” Muslim World (2016): 145–55. Sultaan ibn ʿAbdurrahmaan al-ʿEed The Way to Salafiyyah, (e-book, undated), http://almuflihoon.com/media/ebooks/AlMuflihoon/theway.pdf. Other related religious decrees by this quietist Salafi scholar can be found at http://www.fatwa-online.com/category/scholars/ sultaan-eed/. Al-ʿEed’s remarks are neither controversial nor deviant from standard pietist Salafi arguments, especially those represented by the Saudi religious establishment. Emin Poljarevic, “In Pursuit of Authenticity: Becoming a Salafi,” Comparative Islamic Studies, 8 (2012): 139–164, especially 141–143. See also Bryan S. Turner, “Acts of Piety: The Political and the Religious, or a Tale of Two Cities,” in Acts of Citizenship, ed. Engin F. Isin and Greg M. Nielsen (London: Zed Books, 2008), 121–136, especially 133–135. See Güney Dogan, “Moral Geographies and the Disciplining of Senses,” Comparative Islamic Studies 8 (2012): 93–112. The issue of religious symbols and citizenship is just as controversial in the mena region as it is some parts of Western Europe, and cuts deeper than the issue of citizenship rights and social belonging. For more on this topic, see an early text of Nilufur Göle, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). Roel Meijer, “Yusuf al-ʿUyairi and the Making of a Revolutionary Salafi Praxis,” Die Welt des Islams 47 (2007): 422–459; Roxanne L. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror. Islamic ­Fundamentalism

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By invoking the Qurʾan, Salafis promote pre-modern solutions to the many problems caused by modernity. Like many social movement organisations in the Middle East and North African region (mena), among them the Islamists (such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Ennahda Party, the Islamic Action Front, and the Sahwa movement), the Salafis have opposed some of the most visible aspects of the modern nation-state’s formation, such as the centralisation of political power and institutionalisation of religious authority, which has most often opposed their interpretations of religious texts by employing the repressive force of the state.10 Salafi groups have responded to these challenges primarily by developing a range of mobilisation strategies11 that do not seek just to deal with modernity, but which are part of a project to create an alternative modernity. Even though these groups claim to be theologically consistent with the “authentic” (literal) meaning of (Sunni) Islam’s canonical texts, their activism demonstrates great diversity in both theory and praxis, especially in terms of understanding the political. This contradiction, their claims of guarding the authentic Islamic teachings and their diverse ways of expressing these claims, is perhaps their greatest asset – so much so that it has made them one of the mena region’s most significant social, and in a few instances political, forces.

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and the Limits of Modern Rationalism: A Work of Comparative Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Adis Duderija, “Constructing the Religious Self and the Other: Neo-traditional Salafi Manhaj,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 21 (2010): 75–93; Roel Meijer, “Politicising al-Jarh wa-l-Taʿdil: Rabiʿ b. Hadi al-Madkhali and the Transnational Battle for Religious Authority,” in Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki, ed. Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort, Kees Versteegh, and Joas Wagemakers (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 375–399. See Emin Poljarevic, “Islamic Tradition and the Meanings of Modernity,” International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 3 (2015): 29–57. An overview of Salafism as a diverse social and religious movement can be found in Roel Meijer, ed., Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement (New York: Hurst, 2009). One of the most cited overviews of the categorisation of Salafi groups can be found in Quintan Wiktorowicz, “Anatomy of the Salafi Movement,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 29 (2006): 207–239. Here, Wiktorowicz divides Salafis into three major clusters: purists, politicos, and jihadis, and defines them as follows: “The purists emphasize a focus on nonviolent methods of propagation, purification, and education. They view politics as a diversion that encourages deviancy. Politicos, in contrast, emphasize application of the Salafi creed to the political arena, which they view as particularly important because it dramatically impacts social justice and the right of God alone to legislate. Jihadis take a more militant position and argue that the current context calls for violence and revolution. All three factions share a common creed but offer different explanations of the contemporary world and its concomitant problems and thus propose different solutions. The splits are about contextual analysis, not belief” (page 208).

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The broader Salafi movement consists exclusively of conservative Sunni groups that claim to be the inheritors and guardians of the Islamic axial period (ca. 610 – 661) and sometimes even elements from the early Islamic tradition (662 – ca. 800s). Their literal interpretations of the canonical religious sources (the Qurʾan and the books of Sunna) seek to reach doctrinal purity and establish orthopraxy. Their primary goal, as with many historical revivalist/reactionary movements, is to achieve a political, spiritual, and economic revival of Muslim-majority societies,12 and their main principle is to establish the political dominance of Islamic monotheism on a global scale, regardless of the existence (or lack thereof) of any other religion(s). The driving force here is the belief in the Divine’s immanence through the existence of the “righteous” community (i.e. Salafis) and the closely-related obligation to establish the “pure” Islamic political order.13 For example, Salafis often invoke one important principle in terms of their envisioned society: al-amr bi-l-maʿruf wa-l-nahi ʿan al-munkar (“enjoining the good and forbidding the evil”).14 Enjoining here also means ordering as well as encouraging the good. This consideration is important, as most Salafis, at least in Egypt, are either explicitly or implicitly bound by the principle of rifq (public civility) and thus find it necessary to endorse a non-violent notion of implementing this principle in order to maintain their imaginary us vs. them dichotomy.15 12

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There is a clear overlap among revivalist, reactionary, and even some revolutionary movements that look back at specific historical periods and draw not only inspiration but also ideals to be implemented, revived, or simply copied into the new spatial context. For example, the early intellectuals of the Renaissance looked back to classical Greece and Rome, copying and reviving their cultural and artistic legacies. Likewise, the intellectual elites behind the Romanticism of the early 19th century opposed the sweeping changes of the Industrial Age, during which technology and rationalism dominated the vision of human ideals. Jamaal al-Din M. Zarabozo, The Life, Teachings and Influence of Muhammad ibn AbdulWahhaab (Riyadh: The Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Dawah and Guidance, 2003), 11–15. This Qurʾanic principle represents a general obligation encompassing the moral and ethical conduct of all Muslims. Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), who is frequently celebrated by Salafis, understood this principle to be directly connected to the concept of jihad, an opinion held by ʿulamaʾ before and ever since the 14th century. He developed a new focus: repairing the Muslim domain from what he perceived to be public and religious wrongdoings and structural corruption within the political establishment. See Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 151–160. Yasir al-Burhami, “Enjoining the good and forbidding the evil,” January 1, 2015, Summary of an audio lecture on the Salafi Call’s official website, http://www.anasalafy.com/play .php?catsmktba=53005.

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This dichotomy is important to keep in mind, especially as regards their conceptualisation of citizenship.16 Salafism can be considered an umbrella term that refers to those self-­ proclaimed religious activists, namely the Salafis, who share a family resemblance. These similarities are located in the shared theological framework generated by their literalist approach to and interpretation of Sunni canonical texts.17 The differences among various Salafi currents primarily depend on their strategies. This is both a source of miscommunication among leading Salafi personalities in their inter-personal rivalries as well as a reflection of a more complex issue related to political and social enmity.18 We find that intra-Salafi rivalry leads many groups to develop distinct mobilisation strategies, ranging from exclusively spiritual and proselytising activities to parliamentary politics and even violent attacks against perceived enemies. In other words, despite their claim to religious authenticity, unity, and doctrinal purity, they are neither insulated from the permeating processes of social and political change nor from the impact of the idea of citizenship.19 In order to better grasp this tension between their will to remain “authentic” and, at the same time, their will to stay socially and politically relevant, I will first demonstrate the broad Salafi understanding of the political, followed by three different examples in which this tension is manifested.

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See Imad Jaad, “Faces of Tribulations,” al-Masry al-Youm June 29, 2015, http://today.almasryalyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=469313; see also Imad Khalil and Hamdi Dabsh “Bishop Jeremia: ‘I reject the third amendment of the constitution’,” al-Masry al-Youm, ­September 24, 2013, http://today.almasryalyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=397865. Most if not all Salafis agree on the Islamic canons (this goes for most Sunni jurisprudential schools) with a slight difference in the attention, or methodological emphasis, given to various textual sources and in relation to a specific issue (e.g. Is a democratic political order in conflict with Islamic principles?). The strategy of inter-personal rivalry is sometimes expressed through a contemporary and expanded version of the classical Islamic method of source critique (in Hadith literature), jarh wa taʿdil (praise and criticism), wherein various influential Muslim scholars and groups are acknowledged as “righteous,” “pious,” “the people of the Sunnah,” “innovators in religion,” “sinners,” or simply “criminals.” See the website of a contemporary Saudi pietist Salafi scholar Rabiʿ bin Hadi al-Madkhali and his application of “criticism” to other Muslim groups: www.rabee.net/ar/rabeegroups.php. Emin Poljarevic, “In Pursuit of Authenticity: Becoming a Salafi”; and Emin Poljarevic, “Les salafistes and a French Reproduction of Certainties.”

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Salafism and the Political

Acknowledging religious differences within a population and identifying “the other” by creating an in-group unity is an essential part of Salafism’s broader political ideology.20 A social group’s understanding of the political strongly influences its shared conception of larger socio-political bonds, among them citizenship. For instance, Salafis identify intensely with what they call manhaj, a specific set of socio-political actions (e.g. religious proselytisation, political activism, study circles, sport activities, and even military combat), as well as with religious values and beliefs that delineate the boundaries of a moral community. Such consideration suggests that their understanding of the political has a bearing on their theoretical conceptualisation of community and collective belonging. In other words, the primary task of Salafi mobilisation in regard to the larger society, whether Muslim-majority or not, is to promote a particular understanding and practice of Islam by establishing its normative principles. Consequently, establishing the principles of one’s understanding of the Islamic tradition includes politicising its doctrine. This process brings the idea of manhaj into sharper focus. For instance, the political work of some Salafi groups reveals the specific method of their exclusionary process, which also establishes a dichotomy between friends (the members of one’s moral community, who share a common worldview and the strategies to achieve their ambitions) and enemies (everyone else, for all of them are, by definition, their moral, political, and ideological adversaries).21 Such logic is common among populist political groups, which make sharp distinctions between members of the narrowly defined in-group and the out-group. The “other” is often represented as the “corrupt” and an essentially evil moral, political, economic, cultural, and otherwise out-group

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This is linked to the traditional Salafi (also mainstream Sunni madhahib) conceptualisation of an ancient Islamic terminology, al-firqa al-najiya (the saved sect) or, more often in jihadist circles, al-ṭaʾifa al-mansura (the victorious group), which is qualitatively different from umma, the more common word for community (or nation). For a useful overview of Muslim sects and who is/is not a true believer, see Montgomery Watt, “Conditions of Membership of the Islamic Community,” Studia Islamica 21 (1964): 5–12. Or at least on the principle of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” For example, in the aftermath of Muhammad Morsi’s overthrow, Hizb al-Nour sided with Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s military regime against its main political rival, the Muslim Brotherhood; see also Joshua Greene, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them (New York: Penguin, 2013), 4–10.

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member.22 Similarly, most, if not all, self-proclaimed Salafi groups strive to revive the various pre-modern religious principles of collective allegiance in modern political contexts, something that has been a characteristic of the broader Islamist activist tradition since the 1970s.23 This is not as reactionary as it might appear at first, for the Salafis’ exclusionary element of religious community-based citizenship is analogous to the idea of nationality-based citizenship,24 as both are grounded in the idea of an imagined community of individual agents who share a set of exclusionary characteristics that are costly, difficult, or even impossible to attain.25 In such a socio-political context, the political implies the continual ­presence of enemies, those “others” whose mere existence threatens the very survival and composition of the community of “believers,” be they related to one another through a shared religious creed, skin colour, or belonging to a common “nation,” language group, or culture. Schmitt explicated such a dynamic in 1920: The phenomenon of the political can be understood only in the context of the ever[−]present possibility of the friend-and-enemy grouping, regardless of the aspects which this possibility implies for morality, aesthetics, and economics.26 Even though this argument was presented as a critique of the democratic praxis found in the Weimar Republic, we can nevertheless detect common elements of the enmity that defined parliamentary politics during periods of 22 23

24

25

26

Cas Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist,” Governance and Opposition 39 (2004): 541–563, especially 544. See Ibrahim Abu-Rabiʿ, “Contemporary Islamic Thought: One or Many?” in The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought, ed. Ibrahim Abu-Rabiʿ (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 1–20. Similarly, the struggle of Black Muslim slaves, but also Arabs and Turks, in antebellum America was defined by race and religion. In other words, skin colour and creed were used as important criteria for u.s. citizenship. This was particularly evident in the u.s. Naturalization Act. See Khaled Beydoun, “Antebellum Islam,” Howard Law Journal 58 (2014): 141–193; Sylviane Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York: New York University Press, 1998). See Uri Davis, “Conceptions of Citizenship in the Middle East: State, Nation, and People,” in Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications, eds. Nils Butenschøn, Uri A. Davis, and Manuel Hassassian (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 49–69. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), 35.

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popular distress and national crises in both post-World War I Germany and, for example, post-2011 Egypt. If we are to adopt Schmitt’s basic premise that “democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but [that] unequals will not be treated equally,” we can also understand his succeeding postulation that “democracy requires, […] first homogeneity and second – if the need arises – [the] elimination or eradication of heterogeneity.”27 In other words, in highly polarised societies, be they religiously, politically, ideologically, or socially divided and stratified, we can assume that the democratic process is unlikely to produce equality and social cohesion. Instead, what seems to happen is that inequality needs to be recognised as the dominating social superstructure within which every particular social group or stratum needs to create internal mechanisms of equality and cohesion to secure its continued existence in the face of constant threats from rival groups – “others” or “enemies.” He exemplifies this argument by reviewing a historical interaction among religious groups: In the democracy of English sects during the seventeenth century e­ quality was based on a consensus of religious convictions. Since the nineteenth century it has existed above all in membership in a particular nation, in national homogeneity. Equality is only interesting and valuable politically so long as it has substance, and for that reason at least the possibility and the risk of inequality.28 Here, he seems to be suggesting that the substance of equality rests on the conceptualisation of the political, whereas social relations rest on the distinction between “friend” and “enemy.” More concretely, equality among the in-group’s 27

Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (Cambridge ma: mit Press, 2000), 9. The idea that the democratic order is a uniquely Western concept has been promoted by Samuel Huntington, who identifies Western civilisation as thoroughly modern and unique and therefore at odds with all other civilisations. This is principally because its display of long-term “industrialization, urbanization, increasing levels of literacy, education, wealth, and social mobilization, and more complex and diversified occupational structures” have contributed to its “success” and, arguably, its domination over others; Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 68. A more pragmatic and constructive understanding of democracy as a universal set of principles (as opposed to a more limited understanding of it as an administrative mechanism of political power transfer), including a complex view of liberalism as a form of cosmopolitanism, can be found in Roland Niezen, A World Beyond Difference: Cultural Identity in the Age of Globalization (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), in particular the concluding chapter of the book, 168ff. 28 Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 9.

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members is a precondition for a functioning democratic order within the ­margins of that particular group (“us”). “Others” are considered aliens, foreigners, and non-citizens even by contemporary liberal democracies based on universal human rights,29 as “enemies” (to various degrees and in various shapes) who cannot be a part of this order because their religious, ideological, or social loyalty rests elsewhere. Such reasoning remains prevalent in nation-states, be they democratic or otherwise, and, paradoxically, is at odds with liberalism.30 The political and politics are conceptually different here. Schmitt rightly argues that politics is a game or a system within the realm of the political and wherein antagonism is real and ongoing. Politics in this case recognises the political with its antagonistic potential, which will make a state a stronger and more virile international actor. Otherwise, if a state’s political elite allows politics to become pluralistic, “liberal,” and tolerant of social and political groups’ differences, it inevitably finds itself weak and sterile, hence unable to fulfil its power potential – e.g. to control and dominate others.31 Schmitt believes that the highest goal (i.e. self-actualisation) of any given state is to dominate others (states etc.). War is therefore a real option and the ultimate test of the (completeness of the) political: The friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy. It is the most extreme consequence of enmity. It does not have to be common, normal, something ideal, or desirable. But it must nevertheless remain a real possibility for as long as the concept of the enemy remains valid.32 Such basic assumptions of the political, namely, that it is shaped and dominated by the dynamic distinction, antagonism, and possibility of war between friends and enemies, is directly related to the Salafi-promoted ideas of “loyalty and disavowal,” whereby loyalty to Islamic principles, as interpreted by them, 29

See Chantal Mouffe, “Carl Schmitt and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy,” in The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, ed. Chantal Mouffe (London: Verso, 1999). See also Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 71–72. 30 For a contemporary example of a similar paradox, see Samer Shehata, “In Egypt Democrats vs. Liberals,” New York Times, July 2, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/03/ opinion/in-egypt-democrats-vs-liberals.html. This contradiction continues to challenge contemporary social theorists. For an overview of the important challenges, see Mouffe, “Carl Schmitt and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy,” and Alfred Stepan and Juan J. Linz, “Democratization Theory and the ‘Arab Spring’,” Journal of Democracy 24 (2013): 15–30. 31 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 69ff. 32 Ibid., 33.

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makes one an authentic Muslim and therefore a moral “citizen” of the Muslim “nation” (umma) that, ideally, transcends state borders. Many of the jihadi Salafi groups, most prominently Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (isis), consider this line of reasoning a central tenet of its operative structure. In claiming Islamic authenticity and purity, Salafis represent a narrowly defined vanguard of Islam that (in a variety of ways) asserts truth claims, including the concept of the political sometimes manifested in everyday parliamentary politics.33 The totalising impulse of Salafism or of any other political thought claiming universalism (e.g. neo-liberalism or communism) incorporates questions related to legitimacy of political power, effective governance, and peoples’ identification with a political, social, and/or communal entity. As such, Salafi political theology is, among other things, systematised around the idea of a hierarchy of religious communities defined through and categorised on the basis of their creed.34 This does not mean that theirs is a political project void of variation. Despite their claim of unity and coherence, Salafi communalism is shaped and occurs within an international order defined by nation-state politics. This reality leads to real disparities among Salafi groups, disparities expressed primarily through their differing mobilisation strategies. This is not only a tactical divergence, as some claim,35 but is rather part of the theological prioritising that asserts specific features and/or objectives of the groups’ shared ambitions: the establishment of a morally flawless Islamic society.36 Much like other social movements, the strategic prioritising of a group is affected by both the cultural and socio-political realities that surround it. As discussed below, some Salafi groups, mainly politicos, enter politics so thoroughly that they effectively replace their notion of the political by the functions of politics;37 thereby, at least in practice, they are transformed. They make a c­ onscious shift from considering communal interaction exclusively

33

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35 36 37

Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan Van Antwerpen, Rethinking Secularism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), especially the introductory chapter, and in part Chapters 8 and 10. At the top of these communities would be the “righteous” Muslims (i.e. Salafis), ­“People of the Book” (Jews and Christians), and sometimes followers of other monotheistic religions. Wiktorowicz, “Anatomy of the Salafi Movement.” Tawfiq al-Saif, “Political Islam in Saudi Arabia: Recent Trends and Future Prospects,” ­Contemporary Arab Affairs 7 (2014): 398–420. This usually means that a political group focuses on negotiations and compromises internally as well externally in order to reach certain objectives prioritised by the leaders of that particular group.

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through the theological framework to the more pragmatic practice of maslaha, or benefit.38 For instance, a Salafi political party engages in cooperation with state authorities in order to ensure its survival within the existing political framework. Their political participation in turn safeguards this particular Salafi group’s primary activity – religious proselytisation. Its subsequent rationalisation for political participation and cooperation with an un-Islamic regime surely violates their basic theological principle of al-walaʾ wa-l-baraʾ – to show allegiance and affection to that which God approves of (everything that complies with Islamic principles), and disavowal of that which is considered un-Islamic. Nevertheless, when faced with nonexistence it asserts the notion of necessity, or rather that of benefit. Such a “utilitarian moment” allows the group’s leadership to temporarily or at least partially violate a central moral principle in order to secure, defend, and promote “the greater good.” It follows, therefore, that any analysis conducted by Salafi politicos needs to consider the socio-political context to a far greater degree than has been the case up to now. It is within the context of the state, its institutional framework, and unique feature (i.e. the claim of sovereignty [of a nation, a people, or a single leader]) that Salafis in general, but politicos in particular, operate in their attempts to accommodate their claims to the “realities” of state power.39

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39

Such shifts in practice and interpretation among Salafis are not uncommon. Consider, for instance, a shift in recommending (Saudi) Muslims not to settle in (or even visit) nonMuslim “lands” (e.g. eu states) for purposes of employment to allowing them to settle down if necessary (i.e. not finding employment in a Muslim-majority state). See Abd al-Razzaq al-ʿAfifi, “Hukm al-safar ila bilad al-kufr lil-amal” [Ruling on Travelling to the Land of Non-Muslims for Work], in 500 Jawab fi al-Buyuʾ wa al-Muʿamalat, ed. Ahmad A. al-Sharifʾi, (Cairo: Dar ibn hazm, 2010); a related issue concerns the early Nasir al-Din al-Albani’s defiance on the issue of non-requirement of niqab – a significant minority opinion among Salafi scholars. This can be found in Stéphane Lacroix, “Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani’s Contribution to Contemporary Salafism,” in Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement ed. Roel Meijer (New York: Hurst, 2009), 58–80. See also William McCants, “The Lesser of Two Evils: The Salafi Turn to Party Politics in Egypt,” Middle East Memo, 23 (Washington dc, The Brookings Institution, 2012), www.brookings.edu/ research/papers/2012/05/01-salafi-egypt-mccants; Uriya Shavit, “‘The Lesser of Two Evils’: Islamic Law and the Emergence of a Broad Agreement on Muslim Participation in Western Political Systems,” Contemporary Islam 8 (2014): 239–259. An innovative analysis of the relation between Islamic judicial tradition and the idea of the modern nation-state can be found in Wael Hallaq, The Impossible State: Islam, Politics and Modernity’s Moral Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), especially Chapter 1.

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The notion of state sovereignty, on the other hand, is particularly appealing to Salafi groups, for it includes a state’s ability to “command” its citizens toward the “truth.” This means that there is a process of valorisation (and thus prioritisation of ethical goals) of what sovereignty means, which is directly linked to a modern state’s capacity to influence public space and opinion. In other words, politicos and jihadi Salafis, regardless of their radically different strategies, choose to engage with politics so they can command, or at least strongly affect, public opinion. The state’s capacity to create “equality” and order within a majority group (i.e. Muslims within a Muslim-majority society) and its dominance over others is attractive. Salafis consider the individual’s political loyalty and identity as primarily, but not exclusively, determined by one’s religious affiliation. For instance, tribal and religious allegiances to the recognised legitimate authorities in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Somalia, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, and other places, is based on a different set of notions from those that centre around individual rights, which is deemed to be “the organizing principle of state-society relations in modern states.”40 Instead, a community embodied in a tribe, religious sect, or ethnic group represents a primordial form of identity that merits a stronger allegiance than that of a modern nation.41 Nevertheless, this tension between the modern and pre-modern understanding of group belonging is not permanent; instead, it is often greatly defused, if not eliminated, by prioritising a particular Salafi group’s interests. For example, some Salafi groups, including some jihadi groups (such as rebel groups in Chechnya) adjusted their long-term strategies as well as their moral, political, and social claims to fit themselves into the modern nationstate framework. This becomes clearer if we consider that the modern state is an institutional construct supported by an abstract mix of human thought that ranges from loyalty and submission to the state’s (i.e. the political elite’s) general framework of a common identity to legitimating that political power and the role and significance of state ideology. From this perspective, citizenship is a denominator through which the legal framework of people’s rights is squared and legitimised. Today we can see that a number of Salafi groups,42 40

41

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Nils Butenschøn, “State, Power, and Citizenship in the Middle East,” in Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications, ed. Nils A. Butenschon, et al., (Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 3–27. Clifford Geertz, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiment and Civil Politics in the New States,” in Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa, ed. Clifford Geertz (New York: Free Press, 1963), 105–157, especially 107ff. This is particularly visible in post-revolutionary Egypt, where a number of Salafi political parties have prioritised different political goals.

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organisations, and political parties are revising previously held certainties, among them their previous rejection of citizenship.

The Ambiguity of Citizenship

As there are many formulations and attempts to capture the meaning of ­citizenship, I have chosen one that demonstrates the ambiguity of the Salafi understanding of this principle; Nils Butenschøn’s broad definition that holds that “citizenship can be considered the organizing principle of state-society relations in modern states.”43 The organising principle, as some liberals would argue, is anchored in the desire to protect individual rights from breaches of state authority. For instance: Citizenship is grounded in the guarantee of legal and political protections from raw coercive power, whether that power comes in the form of the sword blade or gun barrel of soldiers, the fists of an abusing spouse or parent, or an employer’s shout of “you’re fired” that leads to a loss of work, income, status and possibly nourishment.44 Such attempts to delineate citizenship rights as an organising principle of a modern nation-state’s relationship with its individual members are defined, discussed, and implemented inconsistently across the spectrum of the existing international order. As we shall see, the discourse of rights and communal belonging has precipitated important divisions among Salafi groups (e.g. missionary groups, political parties, and various violent factions). Such divisions are closely tied to, and in many ways dependent upon, the political order of the nation-state within which these groups are mobilising.45 This effectively violates a general perception of Salafi homogeneity, one that usually lumps 43 44

45

Butenschøn, “State, Power, and Citizenship in the Middle East,” 11. Thomas Janoski and Brian Gran, “Political Citizenship: Foundations of Rights,” in Handbook of Citizenship Studies, ed. Engin F. Isin and Bryan S. Turner (London: Sage, 2002), 13–52, especially 13. See John Turner, “Strategic Differences: Al Qaeda’s Split with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 26 (2015): 208–225; Khalil al-Anani and Maszlee Malik, “Pious Way to Politics: The Rise of Political Salafism in Post-Mubarak Egypt,” Digest of Middle East Studies 22 (2013): 57–735; Bjørn Olav Utvik, “For Gud og friheten: politiske salafier i Kuwait og Saudi-Arabia” [For God and Freedom: Political Salafis in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia], Babylon – Nordisk tidskrift for Midtøstenstudier 2 (2010): 32–43; and Bjørn Olav Utvik, “Islamister i åpnere landskap: hvilken rolle i det nye Midtøsten?” [“Islamists in Open Landscape: What is their Role in the New Middle East?”], Tidsskriftet Politik 15 (2012) 1.

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together an eclectic set of Muslim puritan groups under the label of “Salafism.” For instance, in his Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus, Andrew March notes that “it is quite clear that the most consistent and conscientious rejection of the very idea of membership and belonging in a non-Muslim society [i.e. citizenship] is limited to the so-called Salafi groups.”46 This view, however, misses important nuances within the broader Salafi movement that reveal an evolving multitude of strategic and even ideological trajectories. In fact, recent research has shown that such groups are as diverse as those belonging to any other movement on the left and right of the traditional political spectrum. Various groups have developed a range of different socio-­political strategies to bring into being a social order based on their individual literalist interpretations of the Islamic canons.47 In other words, both the scholars’ and the Salafi activists’ perception of a unified movement is disintegrating in the wake of overwhelming empirical evidence of diversity among self-ascribed Salafi activist groups and political parties. In the post-Arab Spring period, such diversity has become clearer as the polities of the mena region produce more contentious and ambiguous political discourses on practically every socio-­ political theme, not least on the meaning of citizenship.48 There is no easy answer to the question of how Salafi groups conceptualise citizenship. As previously noted, despite their relative consensus on the abstract ideas of the political, there exist many different understandings of how politics should be conducted in practice. The region’s differing political contexts offer various sets of options. As is true of any socio-political group in a rapidly changing political order, Salafi factions need to address the question “what binds us together?” with more precision than ever before. For instance, the Muslim Brotherhood had already re-examined such questions49 by seeking 46

47 48 49

Andrew March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 274; on a similar point see Talal Asad, “Reflections on Blasphemy and Social Criticism,” in Religion: Beyond a Concept, ed. Hent de Vries (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 580–610. Poljarevic, “In Pursuit of Authenticity”; see also Meijer (ed.), Global Salafism; Poljarevic, “Locating the Event Horizon.” Jennifer Mitchell, “Citizenship,” in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, ed. Gerhard Bowering (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 94–95. Amr Hamzawy and Nathan J. Brown, “The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: Islamist Participation in a Closing Political Environment,” Carnegie Paper No. 19 (Washington dc: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2010); Amr Hamzawy and Nathan J. Brown, “Can Egypt’s Troubled Elections Produce a More Democratic Future?” Policy Outlook ­(Washington dc: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005); Abdullah Saeed, “Rethinking Citizenship Rights of Non-Muslims in an Islamic State: Rashid al-Ghannushi’s Contribution to Evolving Debate,” Islam and Christian Relations 10 (1999): 307–323; Emin

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inspiration from such previously scorned ideological traditions as liberalism.50 Throughout the late twentieth century, it survived and gradually developed into a solid social movement through its leadership’s long-term planning and the establishment of a membership system that transformed peripheral and targeted sympathisers into loyal and dedicated activists focused on realising its socio-political vision.51 The Muslim Brotherhood’s current widespread appeal rests primarily on its organisational skill in terms of coordinating the mobilisation mechanism for socio-political dissent. Moreover, well-established communication networks and interpersonal (i.e. viva voce) recruitment, supported by the activities of regular neighbourhood “family”-groups (usrah), played a significant role in maintaining the Muslim Brotherhood’s cohesion and survival despite the shifting authoritarian regimes and their repressive tactics. Similarly, in the aftermath of Mubarak’s fall in February 2011, al-Daʿwa al-Salafiyya (the Salafi Call) and other Salafi groups adjusted their strategic and conceptual frameworks by addressing the same issues tackled earlier by the Muslim Brotherhood. For instance, they initially answered the question “what binds Muslim citizens together?” with “the ‘correct’ faith and practice of Islam.” In this context, “correctness” is supposed to secure one’s authentic identity and God’s right over the believers, thereby making them not only morally responsible but also moving them closer to becoming God’s “friends.” From a Salafi perspective, this acknowledgment and affirmation of difference within a multi-religious, ethic, and ideologically diverse population has another goal: to identify the “other.” In effect, the vast majority of Salafis, particularly in a Muslim-majority context such as Egypt, seek the institutionalisation of communal differences as a major organising principle of their society and state. They set the community’s borders by identifying the ­individual and communal creeds connected to various groups, such as Copts, Sufis, liberals, and secularists. Thus, both friends and (potential) enemies are

50

51

Poljarevic, Exploring Individual Motivations for Social Change: A Study in Mobilization of Islamism under Repression in Pre-revolutionary Egypt (PhD diss., European University Institute, 2012). Hesham al-Awadi, In Pursuit of Legitimacy: The Muslim Brothers and Mubarak 1982– 2000 (New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2004); Utvik “Islamists in Open Landscape”; ­Michaelle L. Browers, Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 121ff. See “The Principles of The Muslim Brotherhood.” http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.ph p?ID=813&LevelID=2&SectionID=116; a similar programme is presented in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Political Program for Parliamentary Elections 2010 (al-Barnamij al-­intikhabi lil-ikhwan al-muslimin, intikhabi al-majlis al-Shaʿb, 2010), the mb’s internal document.

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categorised according to a set of propositions rooted in ideological, religious, and ethnic differences.52 The debate on citizenship rights, at least in Egypt between mid-2011 and mid-2013, revealed a notable conceptual ambiguity as regards understanding the classical term ahl al-dhimma, traditionally defined as Christian and Jewish subjects who are ruled by Muslims based on a contract of protection.53 This concept has often been cited as an alternative to the liberal notion(s) of citizenship based on (religious) communitarian principles, at least in theory.54 This range could include reserving full citizenship (al-muwatana al-ʿamma) rights for Muslims as the main religious community, and limited or specified citizenship rights (al-muwatana al-khassa) for all others. Drawing on Faulks, Meijer suggests a three-dimensional model that is partially related to the Salafi construction. First, the term citizenship would define the extent of belonging (who is a citizen?). Here, the citizen’s allegiance to a particular set of state symbols is crucial. Secondly, the content of citizenship would reveal how it is defined and who does (and does not) belong to the main (religious/ political) community. Thirdly, the depth of citizenship refers to the level of an individual’s (or a community’s) commitment to the group, territory, and state institution in question.55 The concept of ahl al-dhimma distinguishes between citizens’ commitment to the idea of the state based upon their religious affiliation and merely to belonging to a religious community.

Salafi Ambiguities in Egypt

The primary goal of Egypt’s Salafis is to transform those of their co-religionists who are passive, demobilised citizens into active, mobilised, and “committed 52

53 54 55

Wael Hallaq, The Impossible State; see also “A Statement about the Political Positions of Nour Party,” January 12, 2014, http://www.almoslim.net/node/198580?page=1. Initially Yasir al-Burhami, the group’s leader, stated that Egypt’s Cops should have the status of the three Jewish tribes in the city of Medina (622–632 c.e.), meaning that they would enjoy the rights of citizens only as outlined in a separate agreement between the Muslim ­(majority) community and Christian (minority) community. A memri(Tv) clip, ­“Egyptian Salafi Leader Yasir Al-Burhami Compares the Christians of Egypt to the Jews of Al-Medina,” http://www.thememriblog.org/blog_personal/en/41621.htm. See Mohammad Fadel, “Contracts,” in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, ed. Gerhard Bowering (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 117–118. See Robert W. Hefner, “Islam and Plurality, Old and New,” Society 51 (2014): 636–644; also Browers, Political Ideology in the Arab World. Roel Meijer, “Political Citizenship and Social Movements in the Arab world,” in Handbook of Political Citizenship and Social Movements, ed. H.A. van der Heijden (Cheltenham: ­Edward Elgar, 2014), 628–659, especially 663ff.

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Muslims” (al-muslim al-multazim) who are involved in communal and now political work, and who will strive to create a general sense of Islamic civic virtue. Bearing this goal in mind, the main Egyptian Salafi group, Alexandria’s al-Daʿwa al-Salafiyya, has been promoting religious mobilisation by spreading its puritan and apolitical activism since the 1970s, initially under the leadership of Alexandria native Muhammad Ismaʿil Muqaddam (b. 1952) and, more recently, under the leadership of Muhammad ʿAbd al-Fattah (b. 1954), with the guidance of its spokesperson Yasir al-Burhami (b. 1958). The tactical and indeed strategic shift from apolitical activism to forming a political party and participating in the political system displays the flexibility of at least the non-violent part of the broad Salafi movement. This adaptation to changing political circumstances is due to the leadership’s decision to take advantage of a unique opportunity to protect, develop, and promote the continued dissemination of their religious doctrine – the primary goal of the Salafi Call – and to establish a political party, the Hizb al-Nour. But the question remains: does the group’s engagement in the political process change its original theological understanding of the political? It seems that it does, for by reconsidering its previously held categorical division between friend and enemy, the Hizb al-Nour transformed both the form and content of its activist practice (exclusively proselytising activities). In other words, from the 1970s until its political involvement in 2011, its leadership had shunned domestic politics by consciously refusing to politicise the group’s primary goal, namely “purifying” the Muslims’ beliefs and practices, which allowed them to maintain their understanding of the political and its particular moral order. After Mubarak’s fall, the Salafi Call’s leadership opted, at least in practice, to abandon this understanding and enter the realm of (parliamentary) politics. As mentioned earlier, politics here signifies a game wherein the strict distinction between friends and enemies becomes blurred and the means of achieving one’s ultimate political goals are not bound by the strict morality found in the ideological realm of the political. This strategic decision and the leadership’s subsequent political choice(s) have been fiercely criticised by other sections of the country’s Salafi community.56 However, what they did was not unique: alJamaʿa al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group) shifted from violent anti-Mubarak regime campaigns during the early 1990s to social grassroots activism during the early 56

Osama al-Mahdi, “‘Brotherhood’ is costly for Islamist leaders [in their effort to] to persuade Nour [Party] to support Morsi,” al-Masryal-Youm, June 15, 2013, http://www.almasryalyoum .com/news/details/221779; see also Saʾid ʿAbd al-Azem’s criticism of the party: “Not falling into sedition [subversion, chaos, betrayal]”: YouTube Channel Hamada almasry, November 15, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQqbO9Wx7YE.

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2000s. It subsequently joined parliamentary politics in the aftermath of the popular revolt of 2011.57 The Salafi Call appeared to be the most stable civil society Salafi organisation prior to 2011, primarily because there was no recorded large-scale fallingout among its members. Nevertheless, the country’s ensuing popular unrest and the decision of the organisation’s leadership to politicise the group did lead to some ruptures. Most notable was the split between Emad al-Din ʿAbd al-Ghafour (b. 1960), a founding member of Hizb al-Nour, and Yasir ­al-Burhami Muhammad ʿAbd al-Fattah’s deputy. Al-Burhami together with the Salafi Call’s core leadership, exposed a difference within the organisation as regards political strategising. The main quarrel seems to have been over the role of the main organisation’s religious leadership and its degree of control over the new party’s political activities. ʿAbd al-Fattah and al-Burhami were strong supporters of the idea that religious scholars had to control the party’s political activities;58 ʿAbd al-Ghafour and his supporters rejected this out of hand and argued for the independence of the political party.59 While the Salafi Call’s leadership struggled to maintain its creed’s “purity” (i.e. the political) by maintaining its control over Hizb al-Nour’s political activities, the party’s more pragmatic members realised that the political and religious frameworks needed to be kept separate, at least in parliamentary politics. The result was the establishment of a rival Salafi political party, the ʿAbd al-Ghafour-led Hizb al-Watan, which seems to have accepted the idea of equal citizenship rights as a political and theological reality. This divergence of strategic practices was present from the formation of Hizb al-Nour. ʿAbd alGhafour’s vision of a successful political party that can offer enough credibility to challenge both the Muslim Brotherhood and the old political elites extended far beyond what the rest of the Salafi Call’s leadership could foresee. One example of his foresight has been his insistence on creating a professional managerial structure in the party, in which only the most competitive candidates would be employed; this meant including people who were not necessarily 57

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Fawaz A Gerges, “The Decline of Revolutionary Islam in Algeria and Egypt,” Survival 41 (1999): 113–125; Khalil al-Anani and Maszlee Malik, “Pious Way to Politics”; William McCants, “The Lesser of Two Evils”; Uriya Shavit, “The Lesser of Two Evils.” See Stephane Lacroix, “Sheikhs and Politicians: Inside the New Egyptian Salafism,” Policy Briefing (Doha: Brookings Doha Center, June 2012). Al Arabiya, “Resignations Are Afflicting the Salafi Nation Party led by Abd al-Ghafour,” ‫لا ����ست��ق���ا لا ت‬ June 14, 2013, http://www.alarabiya.net/ar/arab-and-world/egypt/2013/06/14/-� ‫ف‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ا �ل غ������ف‬-‫�ع���د‬-‫ � ز ع�ا �م��ة‬- ��‫ا �ل��س�� فل‬- ‫ا �ل ط� ن‬- ‫ح ز‬ � ‫ور‬ �‫ي� ب‬ ‫ب‬ � ‫ب�� ب� و‬-� ‫��ع���ص�ا‬.html; see also Kent Davis-Packard, “A Ripple Beneath the Surface: Trends in Salafi Political Thought,” Analysis Paper Number 33(Washington dc: The Brookings Institution, 2014).

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Salafis. This has meant that the fissure in the biggest Salafi camp in Egypt evolved, perhaps initially due to personal animosity between the top-leaders, but ultimately due to differences in political vision and aspiration and not necessarily due to religious disputes. This sort of political fragmentation is not unusual in the Egyptian context. The Muslim Brotherhood experienced a similar rupture during the mid1990s when it faced, among other things, an internal disagreement over the role of religious discourse and terminology in party politics. At that time, the “political rebel” Abu al-ʿAla al-Madi (b. 1952) and his supporters left to form Hizb al-Wasat, an independent political party that represented a clearer break between religion and politics, primarily by conceptualising religion in far broader terms.60 A similar disagreement within the Muslim Brotherhood one that revolved around separating its social (including religious) and its political activism, was observed during the 2000s and 2010s.61 The number of factors contributing to these ruptures is potentially endless. Nevertheless, one clear element is post-Arab Spring Egypt’s dramatically changed political climate. The topics of public discussion and potential for a reformed social contract facilitated vibrant discussions on previously banned topics, at least during March 2011–July 2013, a period of relative political freedom and vivacious political campaigning. For example, Salafis were confronted with the issue of citizenship, and each of the seven registered Salafi parties had to offer “an authentic” Islamic solution to the issue of rights, especially as regards religious minorities and women’s rights.62 In the immediate aftermath of the popular uprisings in 2011 it became evident that the Egyptian ­polity is 60 61 62

Carrie R. Wickham, “The Path to Moderation: Strategy and Learning in the Formation of Egypt’s Wasat Party,” Comparative Politics 36 (2004): 205–228, especially 209–210. Emin Poljarevic, Exploring Individual Motivations for Social Change: A Study in Mobilization of Islamism under Repression in Pre-revolutionary Egypt, 185ff. The seven parties are Hizb al-Nour (Party of Light), Hizb al-Asala (Authenticity Party), Hizb al-Binaʾ wa-l-Tanmiya (Building and Development Party), Hizb al-Fadila (Virtue Party), Hizb al-Shaʿb (People’s Party), Hizb al-Salama wa-l-Tanmiya (Safety and Development Party, currently called Islamic Party), and Hizb al-Raya (Flag Party). Other parties became largely defunct after the military coup on July 3, 2013, among them Hizb al-Watan (Homeland Party) and Hizb al-Umma ([Islamic] Nation Party). See also N. Saleh, “Egypt’s Salafist Ansar al-Sunna to Form Political Group,” al-Sharq al-Awsat, April 7, 2011, http://www.aawsat.net/2011/04/article55246907/egypts-salafist-ansar-al-sunnato-form-political-group; al-Ahram, “Al-Nour [Party] Calls Copts to Join” (al-Nur yadʾu alaqbat lil-indhimam ilayhu), al-Ahram, June 18, 2011, http://www.ahram.org.eg/The-First/ News/83774.aspx; H. Dabash, “The Salafi Nour Party” (Hizb Al-Nour Salafi…), al-Masri alYoum, June 14, 2011, http://www.almasryalyoum.com/node/468178.

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f­ ractured and deeply divided. In such a political climate the Salafi Call’s appeal to establish a moral and virtuous political communitarian order reinforced such divisions, which demonstrated the weakness and, perhaps even, absence of a (viable) social contract.63 The group’s ultimate decision was to realign itself with the military regime in the belief that such a move represented its best option to preserve its social (and political) gains in the face of the concern that they would be excluded from any political activities following the predicament of the Muslim Brotherhood. This meant that while Hizb al-Nour quickly learned how to use the current political vocabulary, others, among them a Tunisian Salafi organisation (Ansar al-Shariʿa), much like earlier Salafi and Islamist groups, explicitly rejected any vocabulary of citizenship rights.64 As noted below, isis is an extreme example of the rejection of the very idea of citizenship rights and of any other terminology not explicitly found in the classical Islamic sources. Its members, who oppose both the idea and reality of the nation-state, are attempting to restructure the current state (dis)order in Iraq and Syria.65 But despite this, Hizb al-Nour’s conceptualisation of citizenship rights clearly remains rooted in communitarian principles and therefore differs from the principles of citizen equality before the law. On the other hand, and while maintaining its Salafi profile, Hizb al-Watan seems to have abandoned this idea and moved toward embracing equal rights for all of Egypt’s citizens.66 63

64 65 66

Some, like Nazih Ayubi, argue(d) that Salafis do not believe in the modern idea of the social contract; Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World (New York: Routledge 1991), 41. That assertion is largely misleading, at least in the socio-political contexts of contemporary Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait where Salafi politicos groups have engaged in general politics of those countries, actively engaging with their regimes to clarify and define the relationship between citizenry and state. Rejection of the social contract across the Salafi activist spectrum might have been the case in 1970s and 1980s, as well as among most jihadi Salafi groups today, but as this chapter shows, the evolutionary process of Salafi groups has produced an important plurality of understandings of politics, not least on how the social contract should be shaped. This is important to note even though such understandings are substantially different from the common liberal notion(s) of the social contract. See Stefano M. Torelli, Fabio Merone, and Francesco Cavatorta, “Salafism in Tunisia: Challenges and Opportunities for Democratization,” Middle East Policy 19 (2012): 140–154. Raymond Hinnebusch, “Syria-Iraq Relations: State Construction and Deconstruction and the mena State System,” lse Middle East Centre Paper 4 (London: Middle East Centre, 2014). El Hasad, “Hizb al-Watan Has a Vision for Ending the [Political] ‘Split’ after Its Withdrawal from the Coalition [against the Coup],” September 21, 2014, http://www.elhasad .com/2014/09/blog-post_501.html.

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Members of the Salafi Call are still unclear about the contents of citizenship rights. During 2011–2013 its leadership was rather pragmatic when it came to applying the classical notion of ahl al-dhimma (protected, but not equal, ­status for minorities) in Egypt – one of the central Salafi principles of the political. AlBurhami explained that citizenship rights could be based on dhimma, something that the Salafi Call prefers and hopes to establish. According to him, this is just one of the alternatives that could serve as the basis for citizenship for minority communities.67 In other words, he recognised that there are several competing understandings involved here, all of which contradict the Salafi option. In the end, however, the Egyptian people are entitled to choose what they wish to implement, even if such a choice would violate the Shariʿa. He thus recognises the reality of the public will (iradat al-shaʿb) and, indirectly, its validity as a source of authority. A similar point was formulated in Hizb al-Nour’s original political program.68 This suggests that the new political climate incentivised various Salafi groups, most notably the Salafi Call, to engage with topics they had previously avoided, such as the state’s political arrangement, the status of women and religious minorities, and universal human rights. But to address these and similar issues realistically, the Salafi leadership had to move beyond just correcting everyday religious rituals and securing its “pure” Muslim identity. Their communitarian understanding of collective rights is likely to dominate their on-going conceptualisation of citizenship rights. Clearly, the Egyptian Salafis consider the goals and needs of the (Muslim) community, as opposed to individuals, as the defining parameter of how all aspects of society, without exception, should be arranged, and which identifiable groups of people can claim rights. At the same time, one can argue that Salafis in general consider rights subordinate to collective obligations and thus, at least in terms of citizenship theories, are closest to the communitarian version of civic republicanism.69 As we have seen, the liberal notion of individual autonomy within the ­citizen rights framework seems to be powerful enough to penetrate even the hard shell of communitarian Salafis. It remains to be seen how more progressive 67

The official YouTube Channel of Salafi Call (anasalafy.com), “Yes to the Constitution, Why? The Second Part of an Interview with Sheikh Yasser Al Burhami,” published D ­ ecember 6, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p67BmtATl7w. 68 Hizb al-Nour (Political Program), retrieved from (archive.org, Wayback Machine), http://www.alnourparty.org/page/program_poilitcal, Hizb al-Nour: Narfud. al-Dawlah ­al-Madaniyyah, available at http://www.youm7.com/News.asp?NewsID=567760. 69 Thomas Janoski and Brian Gran, “Political Citizenship: Foundations of Rights,” in ­Handbook of Citizenship Studies, ed. Engin F. Isin and Bryan S. Turner (London: Sage, 2002), 19–20.

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forces within the debate, such as ʿAbd al-Ghaffour and his Hizb al-Watan, will resolve the apparent tensions between individual autonomy and communitarian rights. Unfortunately, the return of authoritarianism in Egypt seems to have stalled any public debate on this topic.

A Form of Institutionalised Salafism

A unique political Salafi understanding of communal rights and collective belonging exists in Saudi Arabia, where a purist (i.e. pietist) form of Salafism has become so firmly established that it has assumed the form of an institutionalised religion characterised by a totalising principle though which Saudi citizens pledge their allegiance to the House of Saud. The majority population adheres to a single religious tradition (a Hanbalised form of purist Salafism) that promotes each citizen’s obligation to obey the political authorities as a religious duty and thus severely limits individual freedoms and the rights of minority groups.70 In this case, citizenship does not mean a set of legal principles by which citizens are protected from the political authorities, but rather their obligation to obey (taʿa) the king (wali al-amr) in return for a specific set of services,71 namely, a general sense of security, political and social stability, and economic privileges.72 The country’s unity and stability rests upon each side fulfilling its mutual responsibilities toward the other and exists within a delicate balance between change and national development.73 At the same time, the religious establishment (ʿulamaʾ) is so completely embedded in its institutional structure that it 70

71 72

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Tawfiq al-Saif, “Political Islam in Saudi Arabia: Recent Trends and Future Prospects,” Contemporary Arab Affairs 7 (2014): 398–420, especially 417. This political order is premised on a pre-modern form of social contract between the ruler and ruled. See Noah Feldman, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2008), 100ff. Badr b. ʿAli al-ʿUtaybi, “Salafism: Method on [Making] Legitimate National Demand,” (2009 [1431]), http://www.al-islam.com/Content.aspx?pageid=1153&ContentID=1417. Naif b. Abdel Aziz, “Crown Prince Speech during the Opening of the Seminar ‘Salafism: A Shariah Approach and a National Demand’” (Riyadh: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2011). Retrieved from http://www.mofa.gov.sa/sites/mofaen/ServicesAndInformation/news/ OfficialSpeechesCrownPrince/Pages/20122221150.aspx; Arab News, “Kingdom will continue to follow Salafist ideology: Prince Naif,” December, 28 2011, www.arabnews.com/ node/402266. Toby Jones, “Seeking a ‘Social Contract’ for Saudi Arabia,” Middle East Research and Information Project (merip) mer 228 (2003), www.merip.org/mer/mer228/seeking -social-contract-saudi-arabia#_28_.

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is completely subservient to the royal family’s political authority. Nevertheless, the balance between religious considerations and the socio-political is more delicate than that.74 For instance, in this context citizenship, or rather the official recognition of one’s nationality represents a form of privilege (makrama) bestowed upon an individual by the ruler. Due to Saudi Arabia’s rentier form of capitalism, membership in the state entails a range of privileges reserved for its citizens, who are, in practice, the king’s subjects, such as tax-free income, free education and healthcare, as well as a host of other monetary rewards.75 Despite this, however, Islam plays an important role in the state by amalgamating its various regions while simultaneously providing the ideology underlying the rule of law through its domestic scholarly judicial and theological elites. Even though Salafism was regarded as the kingdom’s official ideological basis from its inception in 1926, King Faisal only officially made it the state religion in the early 1970s when he established the Council of Senior ʿUlamaʾ, made up of a group of leading religious scholars, many of whom are descended from Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhab al-Shaykh, an ally of the al-Saud in their first attempt to establish a state.76 This institutionalisation of a pre-modern religio-political order has allowed the Salafi movement to develop a solid intellectual base, out of which other streams of activism have spread abroad. This “purist” Salafi methodology (manhaj) served as an important point of departure for both “politicos” and “jihadis,” as their theological arguments and calls for action are based primarily on their high regard for a significant (historical) part of the traditional religious scholarship in contemporary Saudi Arabia. At the same time, and somewhat paradoxically, “to preserve the Saudi state, Wahhabi [Salafi] ʿulamaʾ stretched the limits of Salafi theology; self-preservation [of the monarchy and the religious elite], rather than the literal interpretation of scripture, was the ultimate criterion.”77 Consequently, this survival instinct has helped preserve the state, although it has also led to the growth of a Salafiinspired opposition to the Saudi monarchy.78 74

See David Commins, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia (London: i.b. Tauris, 2006), 157–163 and especially 205ff. 75 J.R. Minnis, “First Nations Education and Rentier Economics: Parallels with the Gulf States,” Canadian Journal of Education/Revue canadienne de l’éducation 29 (2006): 975–997. 76 Madawi Al-Rasheed, Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices from a New Generation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 27ff. 77 Ibid., 35. 78 Commins, The Wahhabi Mission, 173–186.

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For example, in order to limit the number of citizens by preventing pilgrims from settling permanently in the country, the government officially defined Saudi nationality, at first called tabiʿiyya and later on jinsiyya, in the following terms in 1954: 1. The person should have been: (a) “a former Ottoman subject (in 1914) resident in the Kingdom at its formation (1926)”; (b) “a former Ottoman subject born on Saudi soil who resided in it from 1914 to 1926”; (c) “every individual who resided in the Kingdom from 1914 to 1926 and had no other nationality.” It may seem peculiar that religious affiliation was not specified, but the tacit understanding among the Saudi jurists was that the person had to be a Muslim.79 This attempt to construct Saudi nationality and status, and subsequently a variation of communal citizenship, illustrates how the political and religious authorities created an imagined community without the explicit auspices of Islamic doctrine. This construction is still highly volatile and arbitrary. This is in part reflected in the workings of tribal relations and developing cooperation between the Gulf monarchies all of which are not easily resolved through purely religiously stipulated legal mechanisms. Instead, such com­ plexities require the ad hoc application of customary and traditional Islamic laws.80 The ambiguity of communal rights and national belonging, which is thus left unresolved, is potentially an important source of socio-political tension, especially in the wake of the Gulf region’s dependency on energy exports and precarious economic conditions. Importantly, the Salafi scholarly elite is both a source of stability in the country as well as a potential base of enmity for the many rival activist and jihadi Salafi groups. The eschatological dimension of the shared Salafi creed is directly linked to its adherents’ understanding of the political, which has, at its core, the totalising idea of a hierarchical social and political order. This has also meant that the pietistic mode of understanding the political has also, to great extent, discouraged the development of politics as defined above. This is true not only for Saudi Arabia but for all gcc member states. In effect, despite 79

80

This consideration raises a number of questions related to the Saudi Shiʿi minority and their absorption into the Saudi nationality, at least formally. At a more informal level, this minority had been repressed, especially after the Iranian revolution of 1978/79. Mariam al-Hakeem, “Thousands in Saudi Arabia after Losing Qatari Citizenship,” Gulf News, April 3, 2005, gulfnews.com/news/gulf/qatar/thousands-in-saudi-arabia-after -losing-qatari-citizenship-1.283103. For the gcc states’ citizenship framework, see the “Sakhir Declaration,” wam, Gulf News, December 25, 2012. http://gulfnews.com/news/ gulf/bahrain/full-text-of-the-gcc-sakhir-declaration-1.1123682. This document is a followup to the “Riyadh Declaration” of December 19, 2011, which is an attempt to promote closer ­cooperation and rekindling the idea of establishing a political union between the six gcc member states.

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the Salafi activists’ broad common goal both in and beyond the Saudi context (i.e. establishing and maintaining the correctness and authenticity of Islam and its religious practices), Salafi groups across the mena region are undergoing a tactical and strategic metamorphosis both in the content and form of their mobilisation.81 One outcome of this transmutation is the emergence and evolution of isis.

The Unambiguous Rejection of Citizenship

For many reasons, isis can be viewed as an outlier on the Salafi ideological scale because it is a product of a specific set of socio-political and military disintegrations and circumstances in Iraq and Syria. Nevertheless, it is the most significant proponent of the jihadi Salafi rejection of the modern state, including the idea of territorially-bound citizenship rights. For example, it has interpreted the Qurʾanic verse “[This is] so that Allah may distinguish the wicked from the good [al-Anfaal: 37]” as “In doing so, He separates the sincere from the insincere, the truthful from the liar, the believer from the hypocrite, and the ally of Allah from the enemy of Allah” in an attempt to eliminate ­dissenting views within the group.82 This dialectic of reality and distinction between friend 81

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Anthony N. Celso, “Zarqawi’s Legacy: Al Qaeda’s isis ‘Renegade’,” Mediterranean Quarterly 26 (2015): 21–41. The analysis shows one of the many points of contention among Salafi groups, in this case the jihadi trend. Various Salafi groups also differ in their understanding of which religious authority has primacy over others in interpreting the text; see Jonathan Brown, “Is Islam Easy to Understand or Not?: Salafis, the Democratization of Interpretation and the Need for the Ulema,” Journal of Islamic Studies 26 (2015): 117–144. See an open letter by various Saudi Salafi scholars who outline the priorities of their (and by extension all other Muslims’) mission to maintain the “correct” Islamic values and “authenticity” of their faith and religion. Mohammed b. Nasir al-Suhaybani (with 73 other signatories), “The Riyadh International Book Fair Statement,” March 12, 2012 (displayed on a website connected to Hizb al-Nour), http://www.almoslim.net/node/161837. Dabiq, “Dismantling a Khariji Cell,” Issue 6 (Rabiʿ al-Awwal [December] 2014) 31, http:// media.clarionproject.org/files/islamic-state/isis-isil-islamic-state-magazine-issue-6-al -qaeda-of-waziristan.pdf. This isis online magazine, first published in English in July 2014, is riddled with terms that describe “the enemy,” and which systematise and ­categorise them: murtadd (apostate), munafiq (hypocrite), salibi (crusader), mujrim ­(criminal), khawarij (“those who have departed from the right path”), murjiʿa (“those who defer God’s judgment”), taghut (false deity or oppressive ruler), nusayriyya (Alawi), and rawafid or “rejectionists” of the first four caliphs (Shiʿis). This terminology specifies the type of enemy that needs to be combated in accordance to what the isis leadership finds to be appropriate action depending on the category of the “enemy.”

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and enemy, which is characteristic of modern-day jihadism, also illustrates a violent interpretation of the principles “enjoining the good and forbidding the evil” and “loyalty to [God and his friends] and disavowal from [enemies of God].” By engaging in armed combat, an isis fighter becomes the equivalent of Schmitt’s partisan who “has turned away from the conventional enmity of the contained war and given himself up to an other – the real – enmity that rises through terror and counterterror, up to annihilation.”83 And so we might suppose that for Schmitt, jihadi Salafism or any other violence-driven socio-political movement represents “the most extreme consequences of the ­political grouping of friend and enemy.”84 Since the occupation of Iraq by the United States and its allies, and particularly since the popular uprisings in Syria in 2011, these extreme ideas have gained traction. The failure to initiate democratic regime change in Iraq and Syria, as well as elsewhere in the mena region, not to mention the ensuing brutal violence in the wake of such failures, has desensitised many indigenous social activist groups and political factions. As a result, they are increasingly choosing to join the most effective groups that, they believe, can protect their collective interests.85 isis has played a significant role in shaping how at least some Syrians and Iraqis understand the political, for its leadership and fighters oppose both the idea and the reality of the nation-state. In fact, they are attempting to replace it with the idea of a Caliphate, thereby making the modern notion of citizenship irrelevant.86 For example, in an extreme act of provocation and rejection of the nation-state and national belonging, groups of foreign-born isis fighters have burned their passports.87 This does 83 84

85

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Carl Schmitt, The Theory of the Partisan: A Commentary/Remark on the Concept of the P­ olitical (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1963), 7. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 35. Such demarcation between enemies and friends are not only characteristic of social and religious movements, but entire states, and quite independent from the fact those states are established democracies or not. Al-Jazeera, “isil Wins Support from Iraq’s Sunni Tribes,” June 4, 2015, http://www.aljazeera. com/news/2015/06/sunni-sheiks-pledge-allegiance-isil-iraq-anbar-150604074642668. html. As a way of comparing the impact of state repression of social activism and the issue of radicalisation, see Donatella della Porta, “Research on Social Movements and ­Political Violence,” Qualitative Sociology 31(2008): 221–230. See Raymond Hinnebusch, “Syria-Iraq Relations: State Construction and Deconstruction and the mena State System,” lse Middle East Centre Paper 4 (London: Middle East ­Centre, 2014). A video showing a self-identified group of isis fighters burning their passports: LiveLeak.com, “isis-Soldiers Burning Their Passports” (12.31min.), uploaded on April 14, 2014, http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=76f_1397526887. See also Shiva Malik, “French

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not mean that other Salafi activists (jihadis or otherwise) living elsewhere will follow suit, even though they would agree, at least in principle, that the reality of nation-states in the mena or other Muslim-majority regions contradicts the idea of the umma, defined as the unified global Muslim community/nation.88 isis represents an extreme example of Salafis rejecting the modern concept of citizenship in favour of belonging to a political group that bases this concept upon one’s membership in a specific religious community. This is the starting point for the broader Salafi understanding of the political, which is based on the classic theological principle of al-walaʾ wa-l-baraʾ (loyalty to Muslims and disavowal of non-Muslims), which confirms a person’s allegiance to God’s will instead of that of the people.89 This allegiance allows Salafi activists to draw a rigid line between insiders and outsiders, included and excluded, while simultaneously collapsing the distinction between religious and civic rights and obligations. Subsequently, the notion of communalism in a Muslim-majority state will include a set of presuppositions of an individual’s loyalty to the Muslim community and disavowal of other religious groups. This is directly tied to the Salafi definition of political belonging, which is based on one’s loyalty (walaʾ) and obligation (taklif) to obey the Islamic tradition. They may have some ­secondary loyalty, perhaps to a state or some other superstructure. This line of reasoning leads to the conclusion that in the isis-run state, ­non-Muslims can

88

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Isis Fighters Filmed Burning Passports and Calling for Terror at Home,” The Guardian, November 20, 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/20/french-isis-fighters-filmed -burning-passports-calling-for-terror. One of the primary differences between isis and other jihadi groups, at least in the realms of religious rhetoric, is its members’ willingness to accept/reject the proclamation of the Caliphate as well as their position regarding the statements made by rival leaders (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi vs. Ayman al-Zawahiri). See Muhammad Abu Rumman, “The Followers of ‘Abu Musʿab’ Swear Their Allegiance to isis and Rebel against ‘Abu Qatada’ and Attack [Abu Muhammad] al-Maqdisi,” al-Hayat, November 21, 2013, http://alhayat.com/ Details/572023. See also the statement of a leading Salafi cleric in Syria and Jabhat alNusra field commander Abu Basir al-Tartousi, in which he assures his followers that he is loyal to al-Qaʿida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and declares the Islamic State fighters as khawarij (i.e. those who have “transgressed” Islamic principles and supposedly its creed), ‫ن‬ ‫��� ن‬-‫ا ق���ت��ت�ا ل‬- ‫�م� ن‬- � �‫ي‬-‫�م�ا‬-‫ح ل‬ http://www.jihadica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/-�‫ي‬ ‫�و‬-� ‫�ب�ي��ا‬ ‫ب‬ � �‫�جر ي‬ ‫ة‬ ‫ة‬ ‫ش‬ ‫و جم‬-��‫ا �ل�د و�ل‬-��‫ ج��م�ا ع‬.pdf. ‫ا �ل����ا �م‬-�‫��ا �ه�د �ي‬ See the pietist Salafi scholar Muhammad Saeed al-Qahtani’s al-Walaʾ wa-l-baraʾ, a­ ccording to the ʿAqeedah of the Salaf, Parts 1 and 2 trans. O. Johnston (London: al-Firdous, 1993). ­Another explanation is that righteous Muslims need to demonstrate rejection of all things ungodly and show their affection towards all things “authentically” Islamic (i.e. godly).

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never be “loyal” because they do not share in the state’s identity (Islam) and function (enjoining the good and forbidding the evil). Therefore, they are not entitled to equal rights. Thus, the Salafi notion of the political (as applied by isis) maintains the distinction between friend and enemy.

Contentious Politics and the Open-Ended Evolution of the Salafi Conception of Citizenship

In Egypt, the Salafi Call seems to have accepted the return of authoritarian rule, viewing it as an opportunity to preserve and advance their activities. Nevertheless, their realignment with political power has revealed several concerns, one of which is the current al-Sisi-led military regime’s revision of the curricula from the elementary school level up to and including the university. The president of Hizb al-Nour, Yunus Makhyun, has objected strongly to how his party is portrayed in the third-grade history book. Naturally, the 2011 popular revolt is explained through the current regime’s prism. Political parties with any religious agenda, especially the Freedom and Justice Party, are described as illegitimate and unconstitutional groups and, ultimately, as enemies of the state. The Salafi Call has responded by mobilising its Hizb al-Nour Party to lobby the regime to revise the schoolbooks, hoping thereby to exclude itself from such a negative and hostile classification.90 Another source of tension has been the state-controlled al-Azhar University, a religious institution that has challenged the Salafi Call’s legitimacy and relevance under the current political order. For example, one of the university’s latest initiatives has been to reform its curriculum by deleting any form of radical interpretation (e.g. literal reading) of Islamic religious sources – or simply any reading contrary to that of the position of al-Azhar. Its president, Abdel Hai Azzab, has stated that “[w]e [al-Azhar] will just teach [the] curricula which is suitable for our times. This emanates from our belief in the necessity of renewal and coping with the latest developments in different disciplines.”91 This policy supports the political strategy promoted by the al-Sisi regime as well as by its predecessors, all of which have sought (unsuccessfully so) to c­ ontrol 90

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Masr al-Arabiya, October 1, 2014, “Hizb al-Nour is Unconstitutional according to ‫ة‬ ‫ا �ل‬ � High School History Book,” http://m.masralarabia.com/‫ا �ل����سي���ا ����سي����ة‬-�/369449-‫حي���ا‬ ‫ف‬ ‫�غ‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ة‬ ‫خ‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ز‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ث‬ ‫ث‬ ‫ث‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ح‬. -�‫ �ا �و�ي‬-���‫ �ا ��ل‬-�‫ �ا ري‬-�‫ �ي‬-�‫د ����س��ور �ي‬-‫ ��ير‬-‫ا ��ل�ور‬-�‫�� ب‬ � Ashraf Khaled, “Islamic University Pledges Reform to Fight Militancy,” University World News 363, April 17, 2015, http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20150416 110346514.

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the content of religious sermons and curricula at the country’s thousands of mosques in order to limit the risk of religiously-inspired political opposition. Al-Azhar plays a significant role in shaping the religious subjectivities of the Egyptian public. As the only state-endorsed institution of religious higher learning, it is responsible for educating and appointing the country’s Islamic religious leaders. In this case, the al-Sisi regime and al-Azhar are making a joint effort to exclude any competing Islamic narrative or interpretation in order to “mitigate the influence of extremist religious orators such as those affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafist groups or Shiites, who use those places of worship to take advantage of religious gatherings.”92 All of these tensions have placed more pressure on the Salafi Call, which has widened its conceptual ambiguity surrounding citizenship rights even further. Having decided to enter politics, its members had to consider the strategies that would attract votes from the wider population and, at the same time, maintain their long-held principles (e.g. al-walaʾ wa-l baraʾ) so that their grassroots activists, those with a clear vision of the meaning of the political and its distinction between friend and enemy, would not defect to other groups. Nevertheless, although the new repertoire of meanings and collective practices is developing rapidly, it remains unclear around which future conceptualisation of citizenship (rights) the majority of Salafi politicos will coalesce. The most likely scenario is that the pietist groups will continue to reject direct participation in any open public debate on citizenship. As the most likely ones to maintain a conservative position, they will also reject the idea of an integrated nationstate based on a citizenship that accords equal rights to all citizens regardless of religious affiliation. The jihadi groups, on the other hand, are most likely to maintain the illegality of any type of citizenship based on the modern nationstate, for this is a purely secular notion of belonging. Activist groups such as the Salafi Call have shown that they are capable of evolving in the direction of Islamist parties in the mena region, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood.93

92

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Rami Galal, “Egypt Closes 27,000 Places of Worship,” www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/03/egypt-endowments-decision-close-worship-places.html, al-Monitor, March 3, 2015. Interestingly, Galal added a web-link explaining what these various groups stand for; this link goes to www.al-sunan.org, which is a famous Salafi pietist website (also endorsed by a senior Saudi scholar Rabiʿ al-Madkhali and is the supervision of another Saudi, Abu ʿAbdallah Mahir al-Qahtani). Thus, the author essentially endorses the definition of Salafism and its opposition to other groups as outlined by pietist Salafis themselves. Amer Katbeh, “The Civil State (Dawla Madanīya) – A New Political Term?” ifair (2014), http://ifair.eu/think/the-civil-state-dawla-madaniya-a-new-political-term/.

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As most Salafi groups operate outside of their respective state’s institutional frameworks, largely as religiously-inspired socio-political opposition, it is ­reasonable to maintain that their defining feature will remain their (at least) conceptual insistence on communitarianism, where religion defines which type of citizenship one will be accorded by the authorities. Although many contemporary Salafis ascribe agency to individuals, they do so only within the confines of a religious, rather than an ethnic or tribal, community. By entering the field of parliamentary politics and political activism, politicos, much like traditional Islamist groups, are reformulating, reorganising, and reinterpreting their previous rejection of democratic politics. It is therefore relevant to ask not if, but to what extent the politico groups will be able influence the state when it comes to shaping the format and content of citizenship in the mena region. Although this question is not answered here, it is important to conclude that the Salafis, at least in their political activist form, have entered the realm of political debate wherein classical Islamic, democratic, and liberal terminologies are readily debated, as much in the streets as in the activists’ study circles. Much like the on-going debate within the Muslim Brotherhood since the late 1990s, politico Salafis are debating the issue in light of their traditional source material, including redefined concepts of dhimma, al-walaʾ wa-l-baraʾ, iradat al-shaʿb, and the principles of al-maqasid and al-maslaha. Within the framework of the broader Salafi debate on citizenship, we can note that the communitarian notion, although in many ways fundamental to the Salafi perception of political life, is slowly being reframed. It is reasonable to assume that politico Salafis will maintain their theological stance on communal/sectarian-based citizenship; however, in practice they will inevitably have to de-emphasise those issues that deal with subjugating minority communities that live within their domain. The processes of religious revisions (murajaʿat) are on-going in the broader context of intellectual Muslim debate, and it seems that the most dynamic revisions are taking place within the Salafi camp – the emergence of Hizb al-Watan is the clearest example of this. We might expect that the Salafis will increasingly emphasise people’s rights rather than their exclusive ­obligations. This will, in turn, produce a Salafi (i.e. politico) conceptualisation of citizenship rights that will bear a close resemblance to civic republicanism. Bibliography Abdel Aziz, Naif b. “Crown Prince Speech during the Opening of the Seminar ‘Salafism: A Shariah Approach and a National Demand’,” Riyadh: Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

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2011. Accessed October 2, 2015. http://www.mofa.gov.sa/sites/mofaen/ServicesAndInformation/news/OfficialSpeechesCrownPrince/Pages/20122221150.aspx. Abu-Rabiʿ, Ibrahim. “Contemporary Islamic Thought: One or Many?” In The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought, edited by Ibrahim Abu-Rabiʿ, 1–20. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. Abu Rumman, Muhammad. “The Followers of ‘Abu Musʿab’ Swear their Allegiance to ISIS and Rebel against ‘Abu Qatada’ and Attack [Abu Muhammad] al-­Maqdisi.” al-Hayat, November 21, 2013. Accessed October 5, 2015. http://alhayat.com/ Details/572023. al-Ahram. “Al-Nour [Party] Calls Copts to Join” (al-Nur yadʾu al-aqbat lil-indhimam ilayhu). al-Ahram, June 18, 2011. Accessed June 1, 2015, http://www.ahram.org.eg/TheFirst/News/83774.aspx. al-Anani, Khalil, and Maszlee Malik. “Pious Way to Politics: The Rise of Political Salafism in Post-Mubarak Egypt.” Digest of Middle East Studies 22 (2013): 57–73. al-ʿAfifi, Abd al-Razzaq “Hukm al-safar ila bilad al-kufr li l-amal” [“Ruling for Travelling to Non-Muslim Lands for Work”]. In 500 jawab fi-l-buyuʾ wa-l-muʾamalat, edited by Ahmad A. al-Sharifʾi, 204–211. Cairo: Dar ibn hazm, 2010. al-Arabiya. “Resignations Are Afflicting the Salafi Nation Party Led by Abd al-Ghafour.” June 14, 2013. Accessed June 5, 2015. http://www.alarabiya.net/ar/arab-and‫ا لا ����ست��ق���ا لا ت‬. �‫ب‬-�‫�ت�ع���ص ف‬-� world/egypt/2013/06/14/ ‫ا �ل غ����ف��ور‬-‫�ع ب���د‬-‫ � زب�ع�ا �م��ة‬-���‫ا �ل��س�� فل‬-�‫ا �لوط� ن‬-�‫ح ز� ب‬ ‫ي‬ html. al-Awadi, Hesham. In Pursuit of Legitimacy: The Muslim Brothers and Mubarak 1982– 2000. New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2004. al-ʿEed, Sultaan ibn ‘Abdurrahmaan. The Way to Salafiyyah (e-book, undated). Ac­­ cessed October 5, 2015. http://almuflihoon.com/media/ebooks/AlMuflihoon/theway .pdf. al-Hakeem, Mariam. “Thousands in Saudi Arabia after Losing Qatari Citizenship.” Gulf News, April 3, 2005. Accessed October 6, 2015. gulfnews.com/news/gulf/qatar/ thousands-in-saudi-arabia-after-losing-qatari-citizenship-1.283103. Al Jazeera, “ISIL Wins Support from Iraq’s Sunni Tribes.” June 4, 2015. Accessed June 5, 2015. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/sunni-sheiks-pledge-allegiance-isil -iraq-anbar-150604074642668.html. al-Qahtani, Muhammad Saeed. Al-Walaʾ Waʾl-Baraʾ According to the ʿAqeedah of the Salaf. London: Al- Firdous, 1993. al-Mahdi, Osama. “‘Brotherhood’ is Costly for Islamist Leaders [in their effort to] to Persuade Nour [Party] to Support Morsi.” al-Masry al-Youm, June 15, 2013. Accessed ­October 8, 2015. http://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/221779. al-Saif, Tawfiq. “Political Islam in Saudi Arabia: Recent Trends and Future Prospects.” Contemporary Arab Affairs 7 (2014): 398–420.

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chapter 14

Citizenship, Public Order, and State Sovereignty: Article 3 of the Egyptian Constitution and the “Divinely Revealed Religions” Rachel M. Scott Constitution debating and writing featured prominently during the events following the ouster of President Mubarak in 2011. Among the many new articles that appeared in the Egyptian Constitution of 2012 was Article 3. The article stated that “the principles of Christian and Jewish laws are the main source of legislation for followers of Christianity and Judaism in matters pertaining to personal status, religious affairs, and the nomination of religious leaders.” While this article was accused of contributing to the “Islamist” nature of the constitution, it was retained by the seemingly more secular Constitution of 2014, which replaced the Constitution of 2012. This chapter discusses the significance of the article’s initial appearance in the Constitution of 2012 and its retention in the Constitution of 2014. The chapter argues that the constitutional commitment to Judaism and Christianity and therefore to the concept of the divinely revealed religions is not simply the product of the increased role of Islamic law in the public sphere, but is distinctly modern and is the result of a complex interaction between Shariʿa law and state law. Article 3, which had a broader constituency of support far beyond that of the Islamists, can be understood as resulting from the process of state formation by which the concept of the divinely revealed religions, linked to the concept of public order, has become nationalised. The nationalisation of the concept of the divinely revealed religions is the result of a compromise between the Coptic Church and the state and has important consequences for the currently hegemonic form of citizenship in Egypt.

Religion, Culture, and Citizenship in State Formation

Lincoln has argued that culture “is the prime instrument through which groups mobilize themselves, construct their collective identity as outsiders, while simultaneously establishing their own internal hierarchy, based

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_016

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on ­varying degrees of adherence to the values that define the group and its members.”1 The articulation of a national culture has aided state formation such that Matthew Arnold has stated “culture suggests the idea of the state.”2 In Culture and the State, Lloyd and Thomas argue that culture “occupies the space between the individual and the state so that the state can lay claim to universality and representation.”3 Religion is a key component of the culture of all nation states. This applies to states that have some sort of religious affiliation or commitment. Yet even in seemingly secular societies, the role of religion or that society’s attitude towards religion forms a key component in how that culture is defined. Thus, religion – in terms of the variety of ways religion is compartmentalised, managed and defined – is a key part of the culture of all nation-states. Peter van der Veer illustrates not only religion’s integral role in the formation of the state, but also with the formation of the nation-state, since in ­nineteenth-century Britain – both internally and in its dealings with colonial India – religion became “a defining feature of the nation, and for that purpose it is transformed in a certain direction, that is, it is nationalized.” Religion, Van der Veer argues “creates the public sphere and in so doing, is transformed and moulded in a national form.”4 Thus religion, he argues, “becomes one of the fields of disciplinary practice in which the modern civil subject is produced.”5 The inter-connected nature of culture, religion, and the formation of the nation-state means that the question of citizenship and its connection with religious orthodoxy and religious heterodoxy becomes more pressing. According to William Cavanaugh, contrary to secularisation narratives that the modern state was established as a solution to violence caused by religion, the religiously confessional nature of the state in fact evolved to be a subject of concern. A key part of the transformation of medieval feudal monarchies into modern states was, he argues, the establishment of religious uniformity in the state.6 The treaty of Westphalia gave the prince the right to determine the religion of the state (limited at the time to Lutheranism, Catholicism and Calvinism). 1 Bruce Lincoln, “Culture,” in Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. Russell McCutcheon and Will Braun (London: Cassell Academic, 2000), 411. 2 David Lloyd and Paul Thomas, Culture and the State (New York and London: Routledge, 1998), 1. 3 Lloyd and Thomas, Culture, 10 and 3. 4 Peter van der Veer, Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain ­(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 22. 5 Van der Veer, Imperial Encounters, 33. 6 William Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 169.

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This had implications for how national culture and its relationship to religion were defined and who was to be included or excluded in the process. Most understandings of citizenship emphasise that the concept involves a direct relationship between the individual and the state. It is also assumed that this relationship gives rights to the citizen. The rights focus of citizenship discourse often serves the narrative that citizenship should be aspired to in other parts of the world. Yet citizenship as bestowed upon the citizen by the state also makes certain demands. Nils Butenschøn argues that “citizenship is a major institutional control mechanism which regulates the distribution of rights and obligations in a society, including access to decision-making arenas and state-controlled economic resources.”7 For Wael Hallaq, the state asserts its sovereign will, which, “knows only itself, deferring to nothing but itself” over the citizen. Thus “to be a citizen means to live under a sovereign will and to privilege the supremacy of the state as the highest value. The citizen as a subject, he argues, is fashioned in the service of a state.”8 In the fashioning of the citizen, the concepts of minority and majority are often produced and reproduced. Saba Mahmood has shown how the figure of the minority – and the production of the “minority problem” in Middle Eastern history – has served as a site for the articulation and exercise of European power.9 This in turn has facilitated the assumption that the minority group represents an incipient threat to national unity.10 Humeira Iqtidar argues that the majority is also managed by the state. A ­ fter Pakistan’s independence, new social imaginaries of the nation state were ­constructed, which are connected to the “precise contours of the state and its relationship to citizenship.” Iqtidar shows that the creation of the Ahmadiyya as a separate community was critical for “articulating what counts as citizenship in Pakistan.” It was done in order “to divert attention from other crises in Pakistani citizenship” and to erase other unmanageable differences within the Muslim/ Pakistani citizen.11 7

8 9 10 11

Nils Butenschøn, “State, Power, and Citizenship in the Middle East: A Theoretical Introduction,” in Citizenship and State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications, ed. Nils Butenschøn et al. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 3. Wael Hallaq, The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 45, 28 and 96. Saba Mahmood, “Religious Freedom, the Minority Question, and Geopolitics in the Middle East,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 54 (2012): 419, 423. Mahmood, “Religious Freedom,” 424. Humeira Iqtidar, “State Management of Religion in Pakistan and Dilemmas of Citizenship,” Citizenship Studies 16 (2012): 1014, 1021–1022.

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This chapter argues that new configurations have occurred as the Egyptian majority and its relationship with religious minorities deemed legitimate and illegitimate have been managed since the country’s independence in 1952. It will illustrate this by looking at the relationship between citizenship, public order and state sovereignty with reference to Article 3 of the 2012 and 2014 Constitutions. It will argue that the way religion and religious minorities are managed in these constitutions shores up Egyptian nationalism and state power. The way that religion and citizenship have been managed is the result of an agreement between the state and the church that emphasises the communal status of citizenship. While the uprisings tried to challenge this concept of citizenship and tried to establish new ideas of citizenship, the communitarian concept of citizenship has only been further consolidated.

Shariʿa as Rule of Law: Continuities and Discontinuities

In thinking about Article 3 or indeed about the 2012 Constitution, one encounters the assumption that anything that appears Islamic represents a seamless continuity with pre-modern Islamic law. However, with reference to pre-­modern Shariʿa, Emon argues that in Shariʿa there was a mutually constitutive relationship between law and governance, so that Shariʿa should be understood as “Rule of Law.”12 Anver Emon argues that “in some cases the intelligibility of a particular legal doctrine may be deeply dependent upon the assumed institutional and political environment in which that rule was or will be applied or otherwise made manifest.”13 In addition, Johansen argues that Shariʿa was ethical and that “Muslim jurists of the pre-modern period had assigned ethical norms an important place and had clearly distinguished purely ethical from enforceable legal norms.”14 A plurality of perspectives was one of the features of pre-modern un-­codified Islamic law. However, in the late nineteenth century, Muslim countries began to codify “traditional Islamic law in certain select areas, particularly family and personal status, but also certain areas of civil law,” and adopt a single legal code as its national law. Andrew March argues that this constituted “a ­revolutionary 12

Anver M. Emon, Religious Pluralism and Islamic Law: Dhimmis and Others in the Empire of Law (Oxford University Press, 2012), 7. 13 Ibid., Religious Pluralism, 18. 14 Baber Johansen, “Apostasy as Objective and Depersonalized Fact: Two Recent Court Judgments,” Social Research 70 (2003): 687.

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transformation of the meaning and practice of the Shariʿa.”15 Such a transformation had important implications for the emerging concept of citizenship in the late nineteenth century. The notion of Shariʿa as a mutually constitutive relationship between law and the enterprise of governance can be seen in the relationship pre-­modern Islamic empires had with their non-Muslim subjects. This relationship was based on the dhimma contract within Islamic law, a contract that accorded protection to Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and, in some cases other non-­ Muslims, on condition that they paid the jizya (a poll-tax) and acknowledged the domination of Islam.16 The dhimma contract, which defined greater protection and freedoms for Jews and Christians and left the question of other non-Muslims less clear, was broadly based on the theological concept of the People of the Book, which implied that freedom of religion was to be accorded to fellow monotheists whose religion was based on some form – a­ lbeit a distorted or misinterpreted one – of revelation from God. The specific legal rights and duties inherent in the dhimma contract were complex and not always clearly defined. The contract offered non-Muslims security of life and property, defence against the enemy, communal self-government and freedom of religious practice. While the People of the Book had freedom to practice religion, some stipulations of the dhimma contract forbade public expressions of Christianity.17 While the dhimma accorded some level of recognition and acceptance to People of the Book, the status of other non-Muslims was more ambiguous. The Maliki and the Hanafi schools argued that the jizya may be collected from any polytheist, while the Shafiʿi and the Hanbali schools argued that jizya may only be accepted from People of the Book and Zoroastrians.18 In addition, jurists differed over the precise meaning of the jizya: some jurists defined the jizya as a substitute for converting to Islam and for receiving protection from attacks 15 16 17 18

Andrew March, “What Can the Islamic Past Teach Us About Secular Modernity?” Political Theory 43 (2015): 838–849. Claude Cahen, “Dhimma,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1965), 227. Ismail Ibn Umar Ibn Kathir, Tafsir Ibn Kathir (Abridged), trans. Shaykh Safiur-Rahman al-Mubarakpuri, 10 vols., vol. 4 (Riyadh: Darussalam, 2000), 407. Ibn Rushd, “‘The Legal Doctrine of Jihad: The Chapter on Jihad from Averroes’ Legal Handbook Al-Bidaya,” in Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam, ed. Rudolph Peters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 40; Al-Mawardi, The Ordinances of Government (Al-Ahkam Al-Sultaniyya wa-l-Wilayat al-Diniyya), trans. Wafaa H. Wahba, Great Books of Islamic Civilization (London: Garnet Publishing, 1996), 159.

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by Muslims or others.19 It could also mean re-numeration that unbelievers paid for a safe life, the right to stay in Islamic lands, the right to remain in their infidelity, and the right to the protection of the state.20 Other interpretations held that the jizya is a payment for unbelief, a punishment for infidelity and an instrument of humiliation by which the unbeliever was vilified and brought low.21 The payment of the jizya gave the dhimmis the right to the cessation of hostilities against them and positive protection.22 Dhimmis were allowed to retain their own religious organisations and places of worship. They were also entitled to their own religious trusts, law courts, and law codes, which covered an area of law that was broader than – although in some respects corresponded with – that denoted by the later term ‘personal status.’ Anver Emon argues that “the frame of ‘tolerance’ does little to explain the intelligibility of the dhimmi rules” and that “the Islamic legal treatment of nonMuslims is symptomatic of the more general challenge of governing a diverse polity.” Far from being constitutive of an Islamic ethos [although here I would argue that connections were clearly made by pre-modern jurists], he argues that “the dhimmi rules are symptomatic of the messy business of ordering and regulating a diverse society.”23 Emon’s concept of a mutually constitutive relationship between law and governance can be seen in how the millet system of the Ottoman Empire was informed by – and yet transcended – the dhimma concept. The millet system emerged gradually to provide, “on the one hand, a degree of religious, cultural, and ethnic continuity within these communities, while on the other it permitted their incorporation into the Ottoman administrative, economic and political system.”24 The millet system enabled political and religious-cultural 19 Tabari, History of the Prophets and Kings (Taʾrikh Al-Rusul wa-l-Muluk), trans. Khalid Blankinship, 39 vols., vol. 11 (The Challenge to Empires) (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York, 1993), 4, 6, 46 and 96. 20 Antoine Fattal, Le Statut Legal des Non-Musulmans en Pays d’Islam, vol. 10, Recherches Publiés sous la Direction De l’Institute de Lettres Orientales de Beyrouth (Beyrouth: Imprimeries Catholique, 1958), 266–267. 21 Antoine Fattal, Le Statut Legal des Non-Musulmans, 266; Ibn Kathir, Tafsir Ibn Kathir (Abridged), 4, 405–406; Ibn Naqqash, “The Jizya Meaning: Edict of Caliph al-Amir ­Bi-Ahkam Illah (1101–1130),” in The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, ed. Bat Yeʾor (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson, 1985), 188. 22 Al-Mawardi, The Ordinances of Government (al-Ahkam al-sultaniyya wa-l-wilayat al -diniyya), 159. 23 Emon, Religious Pluralism, 5, 3. 24 Kemal Karpat, “Millets and Nationality: The Roots of the Incongruity of Nation and State in the Post-Ottoman Era,” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning

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systems to be independent of one another. Millets were not territorial. Christian millets, for example, had control over church organisations, schools, legal and court systems, waqf property, and had great economic power and independence. In addition, the rights and freedoms of the original millet granted by Sultan Mehmet ii in the 15th century were “given in perpetuity and thus became inherent in the millet itself without being subject to renewal, abolition or limitation.”25 The Ottoman Empire was highly flexible and was based – p ­ articularly before the identification of the Ottoman state with a distinct Sunni identity in the later period – on the idea that “difference was perceived as the norm, a condition that need not be altered, but managed.”26 In the mid-19th century, a number of reforms were introduced to this system. These reforms created new relationships and had new implications for the state’s management of culture, religion, citizenship and orthodoxy and heterodoxy. The religious discrimination of the dhimma system was abolished. The Hatti Hümayun Decree of 1856 guaranteed freedom of religious practice, freedom to convert from Islam and no distinction on the basis of religion. ­However, Karpat argues that the reforms “recognized implicitly that the ­government was the source of their rights and freedoms” (emphasis in the original). In addition, such reforms resulted in the shrinkage of millet control: the jurisdiction of the clergy was limited to duties defined as “religious” and the government extended its authority over other activities of the millets such as education.27 Thus the communitarian model of religious pluralism was narrowed. Eventually, religious communities were left in control of an area of law that came to be defined as “personal status law” (qanun al-ahwal al-shakhsiyya), which is a term that did not exist in the classical texts of Islamic jurisprudence. It was first used in 1893 by the Egyptian jurist Muhammad Qadri Pasha, and the first definition of personal status was given by the Egyptian Court of Cassation in 1934.28 Personal status law roughly corresponded with the extent to which Islamic Shariʿa was pushed back when it gave way to Western criminal and commercial law designating the sphere of personal status as an area of communal/ religious autonomy. In this process, not only was the area in which the citizen dealt directly with the state

of a Plural Society, ed. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1982), 142. 25 Ibid.,145. 26 Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 168 and 120. 27 Karpat, “Millets and Nationality,” 164–165. 28 Jamal J. Nasir, The Islamic Law of Personal Status (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2009), 34–36.

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enlarged, “but the rights and freedoms in all areas and in the area of personal status were entrusted to the government.”29 Ottoman nationality established a more direct relationship between the ­individual and the state. In 1869, the Ottoman government imposed upon ­Ottoman subjects an Ottoman citizenship that was modelled on Western ­conceptions of citizenship: every person born of an Ottoman father was an Ottoman subject and was equal regardless of faith or language.30 Yet in doing so, the relationship between non-Muslims and the state was altered by the fact that the Sunni Muslim character of the Ottoman government acquired a new political significance since the idea of the nation state, “demanded that the political system and the religious-national culture be expressions of each other.”31

Citizenship, Nationality and Religion

Wael Hallaq argues that “as a paradigm of governance, [the modern state] evolved in Europe … [and] is uncomfortably seated in many parts of the world” and that “none of the otherwise persistent structures of the modern state have ever proven themselves compatible with even the basic requirements of Islamic governance.”32 For many, citizenship is a Western concept that has been transplanted onto Middle Eastern societies that are poorly suited to it. ­According to Kemal Karpat, the secular idea of state and the religious concept of nation rooted in the millet philosophy are incompatible. He argues that the concepts of nation and state, which were naturally integrated into each other in Western Europe had no basis for success in the Ottoman Empire or its successor states, where the nation was conflated with religious community.33 Certainly, citizenship and its connection with the legacy of colonialism cannot be ignored. In the case of Egypt, the evolution of the concept of Egyptian citizenship is complex: this includes the challenge of identifying the point at which Ottoman citizenship gave way to Egyptian citizenship.34 Yet, the 29 Karpat, “Millets and Nationality,” 164. 30 Ibid., 163. 31 Ibid., 144. 32 Hallaq, The Impossible State, 156. 33 Karpat, “Millets and Nationality,” 141, 166. 34 While most Egyptian historiography is nationalist in orientation and emphasises the early transfer from Ottoman nationality to Egyptian nationality, Will Hanley demonstrates the persistence of Egyptians’ Ottoman status well into the twentieth century. He argues for, on the basis of censuses and law courts, signs of enduring Ottoman citizenship in Egypt, even if this model of citizenship was apolitical. Will Hanley, “When Did Egyptians

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c­ oncept of citizenship – in a variety of manifestations and interpretations – has been broadly – and readily – embraced: Islamist ideology, for example, has shown an impressive flexibility at internalising – and naturalising – the concept of citizenship. The importance of citizenship as a concept to define the relationship between Egyptians and the state has become more prevalent in the last two decades. This is due, Meijer argues, to the collapse of the authoritarian bargain contract that left a vacuum that could only be filled by a new social contract based on rights.35 New forms of contestation, he argues, have emerged, which have included the demand for citizenship rights.36 Thus, in 2007, a ­constitutional amendment to the 1971 Constitution was made to i­ nclude a commitment to the concept of citizenship. This was included in subsequent constitutions. The concept featured prominently in discourse about the 2011 revolution when invoking citizenship claims became a source of legitimacy. While the concept of citizenship has been adopted as the normative basis for relations between Egyptians and the state, what that means is contested. There are different understandings of citizenship and the authoritarian, nationalist state version has – at least for now – prevailed. One of the areas about which the concept of citizenship is contested is the extent to which communitarian ideas inherited from the millet system can be absorbed into Egyptian articulations of citizenship. The question of the extent to which communitarian ideas inherited from the millet system are compatible with the relationship between individual Egyptians and the state was reflected in debates about the Constitution of 1923. The 1923 Constitution declared Egypt a sovereign, free and independent state, with Islam as its religion and Arabic its official language. It has been customary for historians to talk of this moment as a secular one that facilitated the integration of Copts and Muslims in the process of Egyptian state building. However, Sebastian Elsässer points out that: “the Egyptian nation, henceforth almost universally accepted as constituting a political community, consisted in many aspects of two (sometimes three) religious groups, namely Muslims and Christians (and Jews).” He argues that the mantra “long live [the unity of] crescent and cross” served the tenet of

35 36

Stop Being Ottomans? An Imperial Citizenship Case Study,” in Multilevel Citizenship: Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism, ed. Willem Maas (University of Pennslyvania Press, 2013), 90–91. Roel Meijer, “The Struggle for Citizenship: The Key to Understanding the Arab Uprisings,” (noref: Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, 2014), 5. Roel Meijer, “Political Citizenship and Social Movements in the Arab World,” in Handbook of Political Citizenship and Social Movements, ed. Hein-Anton van der Heijden (Edward Elgar, 2014), 628–660.

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Egyptian nationalism and was elaborated on verbally in a discourse of national unity. He argues that religious symbols, references, and networks remained highly significant and that popular support “was often mobilized through religious or communal networks and expressed in a religious idiom.” This religious patriotism, he argues, “strongly rejected secularism and atheism and insisted that national identity should remain connected to religious identity.”37 During discussions about the 1923 Constitution, the British supported some sort of quota for the Copts, while both Muslims and Copts were divided on the issue of quotas. The Constitution of 1923, however, did not mention quotas for Christians. It states the equality of all Egyptians before the law regardless of religion (Article 3), freedom of belief (Article 12) and freedom of worship within the bounds of public order and morals (Article 13). Islam was named the religion of the state (although no commitment was made to the Shariʿa) and Coptic Christianity was not given any status in the constitution.38 For S.S. Hasan, this failure to recognize the specific nature of Coptic identity was regrettable but understandable, given the mosaic nature of Egypt’s ethnic and religious make-up. The left, she criticizes, “never question[ed] the model of national integration that the Egyptian nationalists brought back from France at the turn of the century, namely a homogenizing one” even though that model of integration never really came to be.39

The State’s Management of Religion, Public Order and State Sovereignty

One of the drawbacks of defining the 1923 Egyptian Constitution and the ­inter-war period as secular is that it sets up a binary between the religious and the secular and opens the way for the common narrative which is that during the second half of the twentieth century, under the influence of Islamists, the law and the state – especially with the 1971 Constitution that was amended in 198040 – became increasingly Islamised. Such a perspective looks upon ­religious movements in Egypt, both Muslim and Christian, as aberrations.41 37 38 39 40 41

Sebastian Elsässer, The Coptic Question in the Mubarak Era (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 33. Ibid., 35. S.S. Hasan, Christians versus Muslims in Modern Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 260–261. This is when Article 2 (first established in 1971) was amended to read “the principles of Islamic sharia are the major source of legislation.” Hasan, Christians versus Muslims, 260.

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The main problem with this narrative is that it assumes the stability of the categories secular and Islamic, polarises and simplifies them and shifts attention away from the important shifts that have occurred to Islamic law in the process. Rather than identifying the differences between secularism and Islamism, it may be useful to think in terms of what secularism and Islamism have in common, specifically that both involve the state’s management of religion – ­including what counts as religion and religious. The management of religion includes the management of the religious majority and religious minorities. Thus, one of the things that secular – and, I would argue, Islamic – states do is, in the words of Hussein Ali Agrama, promote “an abstract notion of ‘religion,’ [in distinction to the civil] define[ing] the spaces it should inhabit, authorize[ing] the sensibilities proper to it, and then work[ing] to discipline actual religious traditions so as to conform to this abstract notion, to fit into those spaces, and to express those sensibilities.” Thus, the project of a modern state, he argues, involves an ongoing entanglement in the question of the relationship between religion and politics.42 This is, of course, not to say that there are no important distinctions between the kind of state envisaged by states that identify themselves as Islamic and those that identify themselves as secular. Rather such an approach can allow one to focus on one of the key issues involved in the projects of these states: defining the boundary between religion and politics. Defining such a boundary plays an important role in the definition of culture and therefore in state formation and reformulation. The state uses its disciplinary power to define what gets to count as religion or religious and therefore to define questions of religious freedom and the relationship between the civil and the religious spheres. Citizenship involves the fashioning of the citizen, which involves the fashioning of what religions are to be considered integral to the nation and what are not. This is integral to the project of modern states regardless of whether they are defined as secular or as Islamic. The regulation of religious freedom and the management of religious minorities and the regulation of the principle of religious freedom are f­ requently 42

Hussein Ali Agrama, “Secularism, Sovereignty, Indeterminacy: Is Egypt a Secular or a Religious State?” Comparative Studies in Society and History 52 (2010): 499. Here I have avoided subscribing to Agrama’s argument that this is a particular characteristic of secularism. Andrew March has criticised Agrama for “not limiting himself to saying that secularism is one [my emphasis] distinctive way of politicizing religion,” but for arguing that: “it is secularism itself that makes religion into an object of politics.” March, “What Can the Islamic Past Teach Us about Secular Modernity?” 7.

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bound up with the concept of public order. The concept of public order ­(al-nitham al- ʿamm) is a concept that has been used by different parties in Egypt to negotiate the relationship between the religious and the secular. The concept of public order is of European origin and was introduced into the Egyptian legal system around the end of the nineteenth century.43 Article 13 of the 1923 constitution restricted the freedom to perform religious rituals “by public order and traditions in the Egyptian state.”44 The Court of Cassation, in several rulings in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, defined public order as “the social, political, economic or moral principles in a state related to the highest (or essential) interest … of society” or as “the essence of the nation.”45 In 1979, the same court defined public order as being based on secular doctrine. However, it was also argued that public order is “sometimes based on a principle related to religious doctrine in the case when such a doctrine has become intimately linked with the legal and social order, deeply rooted in the conscience of society.”46 Thus, while seemingly a secular concept, Maurits Berger has shown how the concept of public order has been used to endorse Islamic rules, “prevent non-Muslim rules from being applied because they violated essential rules of Islamic law,” and to protect the essential values of non-Muslim law and therefore the autonomy of non-Muslim religious communities.47 Many political parties and state and non-state actors, Islamist and secular, have utilised the concept of public order to invoke the limits of Egyptian society that cannot be transgressed (what those limits are, of course, would vary depending on who invoked them). Elsewhere, I have argued that the Muslim Brotherhood, in the years leading up to the revolution of 2011 and for two years subsequent to that, used the concept of public order to manage and define 43

44 45 46 47

The first European code to adopt the expression ordre public was the French Civil Code of 1804 (Art. 6), which reads, “Private agreements cannot derogate from laws which affect ordre public and good morals,” Maurits Berger, “Apostasy and Public Policy in Contemporary Egypt: An Evaluation of Recent Cases from Egypt’s Highest Courts,” Human Rights Quarterly 25 (2003): 720–740. The concept is, of course, vague and variable. According to Husserl, “Ordre public is a function of time and place.” It stands for certain principles that are considered essential to a society and that may not be altered by any rules of that society. Public order was used to decide on the admissibility of a foreign law, the application of which may be rejected if it violates domestic public order, Gerhart Husserl, 1938. “Public Policy and Ordre Public,” Virginia Law Review 25 (1938): 37–67. www.dustour.eg. Maurits Berger, “Apostasy and Public Policy in Contemporary Egypt.” Maurits Berger, “Public Policy and Islamic Law: The Modern Dhimmi in Contemporary Egyptian Family Law,” Islamic Law and Society 8 (2001): 88–136, 104. Ibid., 29–30, 118–121.

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religion and to advance its own interests in its bid for – and consolidation of – state power. The Muslim Brotherhood used the concept of public order – with a more categorical commitment to its religious nature than the Egyptian courts had, before then, expressed – to legitimise itself as an Islamic group that is based on Islam. However, it did so in such a way that the group could distance itself from the accusation that it is preoccupied with a literal application of the rulings of the Shariʿa and in so doing show commitment to current institutional and legal realities.48 In analysing the discourse of secularism in the West, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd argues that secularism in the West “has been constituted and reproduced through opposition to particular representations of Islam,” whereby political Islam “is conceived as a threat to a democratic and laicist public order.”49 Saba Mahmood and Peter Danchin have argued that the distinction between the right to “freedom of thought, conscience and religion” and the right to “manifest one’s religious beliefs” is a distinction that is used by many modern nation states to regulate the principle of religious freedom. They illustrate how “courts have tended to privilege the values and sensibilities of the majority religion and discriminate against minority faiths through recourse to the secular concept of public order.” The state’s deployment of the term public order thereby “authorizes the state’s intervention in the domain of religious belief that it declares to be autonomous and sacrosanct.”50

The 2012 Constitution, Article 3 and the “Divinely Revealed Religions”

One of the mechanisms by which the state is involved in managing religion, in defining the relationship between religion and politics and fashioning the minority and the majority is constitution writing. Constitution writing is also a useful site from which to examine the interaction between religion, culture, heterodoxy and citizenship and to look at how the modern state manages the majority and minorities.

48 49 50

Rachel Scott, “Managing Religion and Renegotiating the Secular: The Muslim Brotherhood and Defining the Religious Sphere,” Politics & Religion 7 (2014): 51–78. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 4 and 10. Saba Mahmood and Peter Danchin, “Immunity or Regulation: Antinomies of Religious Freedom,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 113 (2014): 130.

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After the revolution of 2011, Egyptians voted to craft a new constitution to symbolise a break with the past. However, the Constitution of 2012, which was passed by a popular referendum at the end of that year, became a source of considerable dissatisfaction. There were different, more liberal visions of what the constitution should look like, which involved different ideas of citizenship. The 2012 Constitution was delegitimised – both in terms of the content of the constitution and in terms of the process by which it was written – by the discourse of the religious-secular binary. The constitution was accused of betraying the ideals of the revolution and was used as an important justification for the coup of 2013, which was immediately followed by an interim constitutional declaration and then by a new constitution which was passed in early 2014. Such a binary pitted the 2012 Islamist constitution against its theoretical ­secular – and therefore human rights oriented – counterpart.51 Anxieties about the very question of where to draw the line between religion and politics were projected onto the constitution. The constitution was treated as an ultimate referendum on the cultural identity of Egypt. One of the criticisms that were levelled against the constitution was that it did not respect the equal rights of everyone although particular attention was paid to the rights of women and religious minorities. Article 3 of the 2012 Constitution states that: “the principles of Christian and Jewish laws are the main source of legislation for followers of Christianity and Judaism in matters pertaining to personal status, religious affairs, and the nomination of religious leaders.” Article 43 of the 2012 Constitution states that: “Freedom of belief is an inviolable right. The state shall guarantee the freedom to practice religious rites and to establish places of worship for the divine religions, as regulated by law.” The reference to “their organization by law” is standard in both the 2012 Constitution and the 2014 Constitution. These two clauses constitutionally enshrined the rights of Jews and ­Christians to follow their own personal status law. While this had long been established in law and practice, a new constitutional commitment was perceived to give it a level of inviolability.52 The two clauses also constitutionally enshrined the principle of the divinely revealed religions as forming a key part 51

52

While such an assumption dominated media coverage, it can also be found in publications such as: Ragab Saad and Moataz El Fegiery, “Citizenship in Post-Awakening Egypt: Power Shifts and Conflicting Perceptions” (Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, January 19, 2014). Article 46 of the 1971 Constitution had simply stated that: “the state shall guarantee the freedom of belief and the freedom of practice of religious rites,” but was limited in law and practice to the divinely revealed religions.

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of the relationship between religion and state in Egypt. They appeared to give formal recognition to Judaism and Christianity and not to others. Article 3 was proposed by the Islamists and, according to Paul Sedra, was “widely touted by members of the Constituent Assembly and supporters of the draft constitution as a ‘concession’ to the sensibilities of the Coptic community.”53 Indeed, it was welcomed among some Christian circles, since it represented the first time that a constitution has recognised the existence of other religions in Egypt.54 However, secular Copts opposed grounding these laws in the authority of the church.55 Secular Copts wanted to have a constitution based on a secular idea of citizenship, an idea that gained force during the uprisings.56 Such Copts participated in the January 25 uprisings despite the opposition of the Coptic Church, and were “driven by the same grievances and demands for bread, freedom, and social justice as their Muslim compatriots.” Such Copts participated, Mariz Tadros argues, in the revolution first and foremost as Egyptians.57 Article 3 gave Jews and Christians the formal recognition of the state, something that seemed to undercut frequently expressed fears that Islamists wish to exile Christians, force them to convert, or, wish to impose Islamic law upon them.58 What the implications of the constitutional article are remain to be seen, including whether Christian communities will use this article to appeal for more autonomy over their personal status law.59 However, Article 3 was frequently portrayed as pointing to the Islamisation of the state, even though it did not revive the dhimma or require Christians and Jews to pay the jizya. It is perhaps easy to equate accepting the jizya from only People of the Book in pre-modern jurisprudence with a current constitutional article that only gives formal recognition to Judaism and Christianity. Certainly, the religious autonomy of religious communities – as opposed to religious individuals – and the fact that autonomy is given to the heavenly religions indicates that the article is theologically and juridically informed by the 53 54 55

56 57 58 59

Paul Sedra, “Copts and the Power over Personal Status,” Jadaliyya (2012). Ragab Saad and Moataz El Fegiery, “Citizenship in Post-Awakening Egypt,” 13. Diana Serôdio and Jayson Casper, “The Development of Egypt’s Constitution: Analysis, Assessment, and Sorting through the Rhetoric,” ed. Cornelis Hulsman (Cairo: Arab-West Report: The Center for Intercultural Dialogue and Translations 2013), 56–57. Mariz Tadros, Copts at the Crossroads: The Challenges of Building Inclusive Democracy in Contemporary Egypt (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press), 2013. Ibid., 119. For example, anxieties have been expressed by Christians that Muslims wish to impose Islamic law upon them in relation to divorce and inheritance. Currently, Christian personal status law is administered in the national courts, often by Muslim judges since the sharia and millet courts were abolished under Nasser.

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Shariʿa. Yet, accepting the jizya from the People of the Book in pre-modern jurisprudence did not equate with a positive endorsement of a particular minority in the context of the modern nation-state. In addition, pre-modern jurists’ law was not codified state law and was therefore more flexible in terms of who could be included and from whom the jizya could be accepted and what meaning was attached to this. Thus in making a constitutional commitment to the concept of the People of the Book, a reconfiguration occurred to Islamic law, whereby the concept of the People of the Book and their religious autonomy became detached from the jizya/dhimma. The state’s recognition of some religions over others constituted something rather new. Article 3 was criticised for explicitly excluding religions other than Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, although the specific limitations on the rights of religions that are not seen as divinely revealed would only come into effect with the passing of particular laws limiting those rights. While the concept of the divinely revealed religions potentially has an impact upon other groups, it is, in this particular context, the implications for the Bahaʾi religion that are particularly significant. It is also by looking at Bahaʾis that one can see how the concept of the divinely revealed religions has become integral to Egyptian citizenship, Egyptian cultural identity and Egyptian nationalism. The Bahaʾi faith originated in nineteenth century Iran, and the presence of Bahaʾis in Egypt dates from the late 19th century. The Bahaʾis gained their first Egyptian converts by 1896. Their legal status in Egypt is extremely complex, and as Johanna Pink has illustrated, is a product of the complex interaction between Shariʿa and state jurisdiction.60 Pink points out that the Bahaʾi faith is post-Qurʾanic and thus the issues that the faith raised had no precedents in classical Islamic law and posed new problems and dilemmas. However, clearly the Bahaʾi faith – with its emphasis on the notion of continuing prophecy and a continuing revelation – constitutes a denial that the Qurʾan is the final revelation and Muhammad is the seal of the Prophets and therefore could be said to pose a theological threat to Islam. This was clearly expressed in the Egyptian fatwas on the Bahaʾis that date from about 1910, which is when Bahaʾis in Egypt gained widespread publicity. Egyptian fatwas on the Bahaʾis tended to state that the faith of Bahaʾis constitutes unbelief (kufr) so that Muslims who embrace it are apostates.61 60

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Johanna Pink, “A Post-Qurʾanic Religion between Apostasy and Public Order: Egyptian Muftis and Courts on the Legal Status of the Bahaʾi Faith,” Islamic Law and Society 10 (2003): 409–434. Ibid., 418. However, even this was not so clear cut. Juan Cole illustrates that Muhammad ʿAbduh and Rashid Rida disagreed about the Bahaʾi faith. Abduh viewed Bahaʾis as

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Such fatwas mostly focused on the status of Bahaʾis as individuals from the perspective of Islamic law. They tended to focus on the Shariʿa rules for apostasy and the implications that their state of apostasy would have for personal status law.62 Pink shows that the muftis preferred to avoid more complicated issues for which classical Islamic law does not provide such definite solutions, such as the question of Bahaʾis of non-Muslim descent who cannot be considered apostates, but are to be considered unbelievers. This reluctance was also due to the fact that muftis were confronted with entirely new questions relating to the relationship between Shariʿa law and state jurisdiction and how certain more ethical or theological sensibilities such as the concept of the People of the Book could be translated into state jurisdiction. It appears to be the case to this day that muftis and jurists – and some Muslim Brotherhood members – tend to avoid this question.63 State law, however, while having many overlaps with the content of these fatwas followed a different trajectory. Before the final independence of Egypt in 1952, state law was more ambiguous and flexible and this provided a greater level of religious freedom for Bahaʾis. For example, in the early twentieth century, Bahaʾis in Egypt were able to form a Local Spiritual Assembly and a ­National Assembly. Bahaʾis also established a publishing house. Bahaʾis were able to build a Bahaʾi temple in 1924. They also tried to acquire recognition as an independent religion by codifying Bahaʾi personal status law and petitioning parliament to grant them the status of a milla.

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a c­ reative minority which was striving to modernise Shiʿi Islam and whose ideas were relevant to Islamic reform in general, whereas Rida saw Bahaʾis as a pernicious threat to Sunni Islam, Juan Cole, “Rashid Rida and the Bahai Faith – a Utilitarian Theory of the Spread of Religion,” Arab Studies Quarterly 5 (1983): 276–291. Pink, “A Post-Qurʾanic Religion,” 419. One example is the fatwa of Jadd al-Haqq Ali Jadd al-Haqq on the question of whether a Bahaʾi’s marriage to a Muslim woman is valid or not. Jadd al-Haqq states that Bahaʾis are not Muslims and that “the Bahaʾi faith is not an Islamic faith and that whoever joins the faith is no longer a Muslim and becomes an apostate from the religion of Islam.” He also argues that many jurists agree on the necessity of killing the apostate if he insists upon his apostasy. In any case, he affirms that the apostate’s marriage is no longer valid and if he was married to a Muslim woman or a non-Muslim woman then the sexual relations would be considered zinna, Jadd al-Haqq ʻAli Jadd al-Haqq, “Zawaj al-Bahaʾi min al-Muslima Batil,” al-Fatawa al-Islamiyya min Dar al-Awqaf al-Misriyya 8 (1982) 23. Muhammad Habib, former Deputy Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood (in 2007) shows some recognition of it and argues that Bahaʾis clash with the public order, and that the ulama consider them apostates. When asked what the solution is, he argues that there is no Islamic law that needs to be put into effect, and that as a party, they are concerned with other issues. Muhammad Habib interviewed by the Author (Cairo, 2007).

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While the petition for recognition as a milla was unsuccessful,64 the very act of petitioning for such recognition illustrated something about public sensibilities towards Bahaʾis. In 1924, an Egyptian court ruled that the Bahaʾi faith was a distinct religion, although the same case defined Bahaʾis as apostates.65 This was lauded by Bahaʾis as progress in their recognition as a distinct and legitimate religion.66 In the 1930s, following controversy over the burial of a Bahaʾi in a Muslim cemetery, two Bahaʾi cemeteries were created. It was at this time that it was common for Bahaʾis to register themselves as Bahaʾis in state documents. In 1944, Shoghi Effendi, the great grandson of Bahaʾuʾllah, expressed “his firm belief that ‘the establishment of […] [the Bahaʾi] faith on a basis of absolute equality with its sister religions’ in Egypt was only a question of time.”67 In 1952, the State Council’s fatwa argued that every citizen has the right to adhere to the Bahaʾi faith or even to be an apostate, “thus the registration offices are required to examine all marriage contracts submitted to them, even if they concern Bahaʾis.”68 However, with the independence of the Egyptian nation-state and the further consolidation of the state and nation building process, one can identify increased restrictions on Bahaʾis and, notably, the increased use of the concept of public order to frame Bahaʾis as heterodox. This must be seen in the context of the state’s centralisation of personal status law courts whereby the concern with what religions the state recognises and what religions it does not recognise became more important. In 1955, the Shariʿa and milli courts were nationalised. While non-Muslims continued to be given a degree of autonomy in matters relating to personal status, it did so by way of exception. Thus, “in the first instance, the personal status law of all Egyptians, regardless of their religion, is governed by Islamic law,” while the exception allowed for non-­Muslims to be governed by their own personal status laws, under the condition that disputes involve people of the same sect and rite and who “at the time of promulgation of this law have their own organized sectarian judicial institutions.” In addition, such laws should also, the court stated, fall within the limits of public policy or public order.69 Such moves paralleled Nasser’s other moves to increase the state’s power over religious and other forms of identity. 64 65 66 67 68 69

Pink, “A Post-Qurʾanic Religion,”411–412. Christopher Buck, “Islam and Minorities: The Case of the Bahaʾis,” Studies in Contemporary Islam 5 (2003) 1–2: 87. Buck, “Islam and Minorities,” 87. Johanna Pink, “Deriding Revealed Religions? Bahaʾis in Egypt,” isim Newsletter October (2002). Pink, “A Post-Qurʾanic Religion,” 422–423. Maurits Berger, “Public Policy and Islamic Law,” 93.

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The state’s centralisation of personal status law courts made the question of state recognition of Bahaʾism more pressing. Starting in the late 1950s, the Bahaʾi faith was dealt with collectively and in this sense it became somewhat detached from the Islamic law provisions which relate to the question of apostasy of the individual of Muslim descent. The concept of public order was increasingly invoked to argue for the lack of public representation and state recognition of Bahaʾism. Discourse increasingly distinguished between the freedom of belief and the public recognition of that belief. In this sense, Article 3 of the 2012 and 2014 Constitutions (with its accompanying Article 43 which became Article 64 in 2014) marks a continuation and consolidation of this trajectory with its implicit distinction between freedom of belief and public expression of that belief. The move to restrict the presence of Bahaʾis in the public sphere came in the context of the newly independent Egypt and was brought about by the seemingly secular nationalist Gamal ʿAbd al-Nasser. In 1957, Bahaʾi marriage contracts were declared as ipso facto invalid, as marriage contracts are valid only if both parties belong to a milla (a religious community recognised by the state).70 In addition, in 1959, in relation to a case of immigration, the administrative court in the State Council argued that the Bahaʾi faith constitutes apostasy and that an apostate “may not become part of the Egyptian people.”71 This trend culminated in Law 263 in 1960. It was preceded in 1959 by Nasser’s issuance of a presidential decree that banned Jehovah’s Witnesses under the accusation of being associated with Zionism. In 1960, Nasser issued Law 263 that banned Bahaʾism, and consequently, the properties of Bahaʾis got confiscated, including their libraries and cemeteries. Their temples were shut down and their historical records destroyed. Nasser’s reasons for turning against Bahaʾism seem to have been mainly related to anti-Zionist sentiment. However, such moves were enabled in many respects because they resonated with Islamic law. This can be seen in further legal cases that upheld the law. In 1971, the Egyptian constitution specified “the state shall guarantee the freedom of belief and the freedom of practice of religious rites” but the 1975 Supreme Court upheld protections only for the three heavenly religions. In 1977, a state council ruling held that the Bahaʾi faith, which, it stated, was not recognised by Shariʿa law, contradicts public order: “thus, every Bahaʾi marriage is invalid, even if it involves two persons of non-Muslim descent.”72 However, the version of Islamic law that enabled 70 71 72

Pink, “A Post-Qurʾanic Religion,” 423. Ibid., 428. Pink implies that the use of the concept of “public order” was a way of overcoming the fact that the status of marriage between Bahaʾis of non-Muslim descent was an issue that

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this ­legislation to be consolidated was a reconfigured and nationalised one. The turn against Bahaʾism thus also occurred because the state recognition of legitimate and illegitimate religion became more pressing during the project of state centralisation and consolidation.

Citizenship and Public Order in the Islamist Movement

Such cases restricting the public expression of Bahaʾism are frequently invoked as an example of the Islamisation of Egypt. There is no doubt that such laws were passed within the context of Islamisation. A look at Islamist literature illustrates the prominence of the concept of People of the Book in their thought. Islamist discourse is infused with the bond between the Abrahamic faiths: there are calls for the “freedom of establishing religious rites for all the known heavenly religions” and it is emphasised – except in the more radical interpretations which tend to be hostile – that Muslims are religiously compelled to have good relations with People of the Book and respect them.73 Such literature tends – in various ways and to varying degrees – to reaffirm the validity of the dhimma contract. However, at the same time, within Islamist discourse there is also an important trend that emphasises – while also invoking the concept of the People of the Book – that the concept of citizenship should form the basis for the relations between non-Muslims and the Egyptian state. The Wasatiyya Islamist intellectuals,74 for example, have emphasised the compatibility

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was problematic in sharia law and not usually addressed in fatwas. Pink, “A Post-Qurʾanic Religion,” 423. Shaykh Muhammad Mutawalli al-Shaʿrawi, Collection of the Fatawa of Al-Shaʿrawi (Jamiʾa Fatawa al-Shaʿrawi), vol. 1–10 (Cairo: Dar al-Jalil, 1999), 105; Muhammad Al-Ghazali, From Here We Learn (Min huna naʿlam …!), 6th ed. (Cairo: Nahdat Misr 2006), 120; Muhammad M. Al-Hudaibi, The Principles of Politics in Islam, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Islamic Inc., 2000), 35; Muhammad Mahdi ʿAkif, “Muslim Brotherhood Initiative on the General Principles of Reform in Egypt,” (Cairo 2004), 13. Wasatiyya means centrist or moderate from the word Wasat (center). It refers to a group of Islamist intellectuals many of whom are former Stalinists or Communists who shifted to Islamism in the late 1970s early 1980s. They are writers with strong nationalist sympathies who seek to synthesize elements of nationalist ideology and Islam. They argue that the Western nationalist experiment has failed and that a combination of inclusive nationalist ideas with Islam is the answer for Egypt’s political community. This group includes the writers Fahmi Huwaydi (1936–), Tariq al-Bishri (1933–), Muhammad ʿImara (1931–), and Muhammad Salim al-ʿAwwa. They have produced a body of literature that advocates

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­between ­citizenship and reinterpreted Islamic law.75 Such discourse argues that the dhimma contract is historically contingent and can be separated from the broader principles of Islamic law. Such thinkers therefore understand the dissonance that would be involved in applying the dhimmi rules in the context of the modern nation state, where Emon argues “the boundaries of contemporary Rule of Law claim spaces [that] are considerably different than … premodern jurists may have imagined.”76 While the Muslim Brotherhood contains members of the old guard who lean towards the concept of the dhimma, the ideas of the Wasatiyya intellectuals have had a considerable influence on the middle and younger generations of the Muslim Brotherhood who refer to their ideas with considerable respect. Muslim Brotherhood members associated with the Freedom and Justice Party have been influenced by their ideas. While the language of these members of the Muslim Brotherhood emphasises citizenship, it is still done – just as the Wasatiyya do – within the context of the Abrahamic religions, which is seen by the Muslim Brotherhood as integral to Egyptian state and nation building. For example, the 2011 Freedom and Justice Party Platform stated that “we believe there is a need for us to further support the role of the Egyptian Church in order to maintain society’s values, morals and ethics” and called for “effective dialogue between the Church on the one hand and between the al-Azhar, Religious Endowments Authority and other civil Islamic institutions on the other hand, in order to maintain the cohesion of the Egyptian national fabric and the advancement of the community.”77 What is interesting is that such thought is insufficiently accompanied by a consideration of the implications behind translating ethical or theological concepts like the People of the Book into state policy backed by the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence. This aligns with Hallaq’s critique that Islamists

the establishment of Islamic law but in a conciliatory and flexible manner. They discuss values such as pluralism, democracy, human rights, and issues such as the rights of minorities and women. Their exploration of the concept of citizenship has made an important contribution to the rethinking of modern Islamic thought. They are a sincere intellectual trend and a strong intellectual force, although they do not have a great deal of popular appeal. 75 Muhammad ʿImara, Tolerance of Islam (Samahat al-islam), 1st ed. (Cairo: al-Falah, 2002), 32; Muhammad Salim al-ʿAwwa, On the Political System of the Islamic State (Fi al-nitham al-siyasi li-l- dawla al-islamiyya) (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1989), 249, 252 and 262; Muhammad Salim al-ʿAwwa, interviewed by the author (Cairo, 2003). 76 Emon, Religious Pluralism and Islamic Law: Dhimmis and Others in the Empire of Law, 22. 77 http://fjponline.com/view.php?pid=80, accessed January 2, 2012.

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have not sufficiently theorised the state.78 This can be seen in the way the concept of public order has been adopted to exclude Bahaʾis as a group from public recognition. This is despite the fact that pre-modern jurisprudence was flexible with regards from whom the jizya could be accepted. Take, for example, the Islamic thinker and writer Muhammad ʿImara, who argues that pluralism extends beyond the People of the Book. Equal treatment was and still should be applied to other man-made positivist religions.79 ­However, he uses the concept of public order to distinguish between public and private freedom of religion and assert controls or limits to the former. He argues that officially recognising Bahaʾis would go against the public order. He says that you can do what you want in your own home but to do it in front of the general public is wrong because it “would harm the feelings and creed of the general public.” Thus, ʿImara argues, “the freedom of the human being is limited by respect for the public order.” He argues that this is the same with homosexuality, which, while practiced, cannot be officially recognised. There is a difference, ʿImara argues, between individual freedom and official recognition of that freedom.80 Similarly, the lawyer and former presidential candidate Muhammad Salim al- ʿAwwa argues that the concept of public order in the sense of defining religious sensibilities that cannot be transgressed is not just for the protection of Islam but is also for the heavenly revealed religions. He argues that while nonMuslims must abide by the values of Islam, Muslims would also not be able to attack any other religion because that would be going against the public order and against the morale of a Muslim state which is composed of religious people.81 Al- ʿAwwa states that while the “Qurʾanic constitution” includes nonMuslims “whatever their religion,” People of the Book, “have more detailed provisions concerning the reverence that is due to them.”82 Additionally, the Islamic writer Fahmi Huwaydi argues that the concept of public order means that it is not possible “to establish a party that calls for apostasy, freethinking, or atheism, or that discredits the heavenly revealed religions in general or Islam in particular, or makes light of the sacred things of 78 Hallaq, The Impossible State. 79 Muhammad ʿImara, Islam and Minorities: The Past, Present and Future (al-Islam wa-laqaliyyat: al-madi, wa al-hadir, wa-l-mustaqbal) (Cairo: Maktabat al-Shuruq al-Dawliyya, 2003), 20. 80 Muhammad ʿImara, interviewed by the author (Cairo, 2007). 81 Muhammad Salim al-ʿAwwa, interviewed by the author, 2003. 82 al-ʿAwwa, On the Political System of the Islamic State (Fi-l-nitham al-siyasi li-l-dawla alislamiyya), 249.

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Islam: its creed, its law, its Qurʾan and its Prophet.” He likens the possible parties to the diversity of schools in Islamic jurisprudence.83 Huwaydi argues that you have a right to be an unbeliever, but you have no right to change the system since this would be against the constitution and the public order.84 However, Huwaydi distinguishes between the freedom of religious expression for those religions and the potential that followers of those religions would use their freedom of expression to change the system. For most Islamists, freedom of expression for Bahaʾis is seen as a threat to the public order because they are seen as having the potential to change the system. For Huwaydi however, the beliefs of all non-Muslims, including Bahaʾis should be respected, and they should have the right to build their own temples although he concedes that this is a complicated legal issue. He also argues that they should have their own personal status law and follow instructions according to their own belief, which, he argues, happened informally in the Ottoman Empire.85 The distinction between the public and the private sphere in Islamic law is not new.86 However, there are particularly high stakes involved in characterising the public sphere in the context of the modern state. As Van der Veer argues, the rise of the nation-state and the emergence of the public sphere are related. Religion creates the public sphere and as such is moulded in a national form.87

A Broader Project

It has been shown that in some respects Articles 3 and 64 can be seen to constitute part of an Islamisation narrative if one accepts that Islamic law has been altered and reconfigured in the process. However, it has also been shown that Articles 3 and 64 represent a culmination in some respects of an already well-established legal reality within the context of Egyptian nation building and has facilitated that nation building. The concept of the divinely revealed religions makes up an intrinsic part of what many parties see as the Egyptian public order. This is even clearer when one recognises that singling out Jews 83

Fahmi Huwaydi, There is Democracy in Islam (Li-l-islam dimuqratiyya) (Cairo: Markaz alAhram, 1993), 97, 150 and 154. 84 Fahmi Huwaydi interviewed by the author (Cairo, 2003). 85 Ibid. 86 Christian Lange, Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 87 Peter van der Veer, Imperial Encounters.

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and ­Christians for recognition and a level of communal autonomy appeared to resonate with a broader constituency beyond that of the Islamists. For example, when the much maligned Constitution of 2012 was abolished, an Interim Constitutional Declaration was declared by the interim president, ʿAdly Mansour from the Supreme Constitutional Court, a supposed bastion of Egyptian secularism. One of the only ten articles contained in the declaration stated that: “The state guarantees the right to religious practice of the three Abrahamic religions.” A commitment to the ability of “followers of the other heavenly religions” “to follow their own religious laws in matters of personal status” also appeared prominently in the document al-Azhar issued after the revolution.88 In addition, the preamble to the 2014 Constitution makes a particular point of emphasising the concept of the Abrahamic religions, which is found, although in more muted terms, in the preamble to the 2012 Constitution. The preamble states that Egypt is where the hearts of its people “looked up to heavens before earth knew the three Abrahamic religions.” It states that “Egypt is the cradle of belief and the banner of glory of the revealed religions” and goes on to mention Moses, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus. In the new constitution that was passed in January 2014, Articles 3 and 43 were retained (a slightly amended version of Article 43 became Article 64) by the entirely differently configured Constituent Assembly (in which greater weight was given to state institutions over elected parties and the Copts were represented by the three representatives of the three Coptic churches). The Salafis and representatives of al-Azhar had an interest in retaining Articles 3 and 43. In addition, in its memorandum released in late July 2013 about the Constitution of 2012, the Coptic Orthodox Church did not seek to abolish Article 3, and Bishop Bola the Church’s representative on the constitutional amendment committee requested that it remain.89 There were some questions as to whether it should be amended to include the category “nonMuslims.” It appears that this was initially supported by the Catholic and 88

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http://www.sis.gov.eg/Ar/Templates/Articles/tmpArticles.aspx?ArtID=48572#.U8clLo XVxe, accessed July 16, 2014. For an English translation see http://www.sis.gov.eg/En/Story .aspx?sid=56424, accessed July 17, 2014. Jenna Ferrecchia, “What Do the Copts Want in the Constitution?/Sarkha: A New Christian Protest Movement,” Arab-West Report, October 28 2013. The Coptic Orthodox Church was more concerned with Article 219, which, it argued, installs a strict code of Islam. It asserted that Article 2, which states that the principles of Islamic sharia are the major source of legislation, should remain in the constitution, but requested amendments to Article 4, which stated that the advice of the ʿulama of al-Azhar is sought on matters related to Islamic sharia.

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Evangelical­churches who then backed down and affirmed the importance of the article remaining as it is.90 Indeed, there were some reports that suggested that some Christians along with al-Azhar and Salafis responded with anger to the suggestion that it be amended to read non-Muslims.91 The Coptic Churches did not strongly demand the addition of non-Muslims and certainly did not support the article’s abolition. In addition, the only amendment to Article 43 that was requested did not do away with the concept of the divinely revealed religions but simply stated that freedom of belief is absolute as opposed to guaranteed, also as regulated by law (now Article 64). Interestingly, the 2014 Egyptian Constitution went further in recognising the communal rights of Copts in a way that reaffirms the concept of the divinely revealed religions. Under a section entitled “transitional provisions,” Article 235 states that: “In its first legislative term following the effective date of this Constitution, the House of Representatives shall issue a law to regulate constructing and renovating churches in a manner that guarantees the freedom to practice religious rituals for Christians” and Article 244, marking a reversal of the decision made in 1923, states that: “the state shall endeavour that youth, Christians, persons with disability and Egyptians living abroad be appropriately represented in the first House of Representatives to be elected after this Constitution is approved, as regulated by law.”92 The Church’s position on Article 3 is perhaps difficult to understand – and it is not to deny that many secular Coptic groups such as the Maspero Youth Union rejected it – if the concept of the divinely revealed religions is seen as simply resulting from the implementation of Shariʿa and the Islamisation of the state. However, part of the explanation lies in the fact that the Church had a great deal to gain in retaining these articles. The Coptic Church’s political and social role, had, since the time of Nasser been strengthened so that the church emerged from Sadat’s period on as the effective political representative of the Copts. While some secular Coptic groups, such as the Maspero Youth Union, after the revolution of 2011, challenged the church as the 90

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Ferrecchia, “What Do the Copts Want in the Constitution?” AWR Daily Overview, September 2, 2013: Catholic and Evangelical Churches Welcome Articles 2, 3, of Amended Constitution,” Arab-West Report, November 27, 2013. Sabri ʿAbd al-Hafiz, “The Islamists: An Article of the Constitution Would Allow the Marriage of Homosexuals and Satan Worshippers,” Elaph, September 25, 2013. http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/20131206EgyptConstitution_DecAr .pdf. For English translation see: http://www.sis.gov.eg/Newvr/Dustor-en001.pdf.

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political ­representative of the Copts93 and advocated a different concept of citizenship,94 these Copts did not emerge as prominent in either drafting the Constitution of 2012 or the Constitution of 2014. Article 3 reinforces the idea that Egypt is made up of religious communities as opposed to self-governing religiously unaffiliated individuals. It also indirectly leads to the restriction of Christian citizens’ right to marry and divorce, since it makes them subject to cannon law and church decrees. The maintenance of separate personal status law therefore reinforces Copts as Christians and reinforces religious difference and thus reinforces the control of the church over the Coptic community. Paul Sedra argues that Article 3 “may well end up having a significant impact on the balance of power within, and political development of, the Coptic community” since “to acknowledge the Shariʿa and call for recognition of Coptic personal status law was simply to reinforce the status of the Church as the central institution in Copts’ daily lives.”95 Here, the reason Bishop Jeremiah, head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Centre in Cairo, gave for resisting the insertion of non-Muslims into Article 3 is instructive. Such an insertion, he argued, “would hurt both Muslims and Christians” since “Christians would not be protected from the requests of Jehovah’s Witnesses” and other denominations that are not recognised by the three Coptic churches. The only way to ensure the interests of the nation, he argued, is to “tighten religious liberties.”96 While Bishop Jeremiah represents one end of the spectrum not only within the Coptic community as a whole but also within the church, these concerns are shared by number within the Coptic Orthodox church. While the Church had a lot to gain from keeping Article 3, so did the secular military regime that spearheaded the constitution and its preamble. Thus, the maintenance of Article 3 must be seen as relating to the articulation of a national culture by certain constituencies, somewhat de-coupled from – but informed by – Shariʿa law – whereby Egypt is defined as a society that is made up of specifically recognized religious communities. Thus, it is clear that many Egyptians have mobilised behind the concept of the divinely revealed religions to define what being Egyptian means. 93

Nasser, for example, weakened the Coptic laity by removing the religious endowments from the authority of the laymen’s council and assigning them to the Coptic Orthodox Church, Mariz Tadros, “Vicissitudes in the Entente between the Coptic Orthodox Chruch and the State in Egypt (1952–2007),” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41 (2009), 271. 94 Tadros, Copts at the Crossroads: The Challenges of Building Inclusive Democracy in Contemporary Egypt (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2012). 95 Sedra, “Copts and the Power over Personal Status.” 96 Ferrecchia, “What Do the Copts Want in the Constitution?”

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Conclusion To conclude, this chapter has explored the convergence between the development of the state, national culture, religious heterodoxy, and citizenship, and argues that the commitment to the concept of the divinely revealed religions constitutes a form of nationalisation of Egyptian religion. Article 3 of the new Egyptian constitution is embedded in the theological, historical, and juridical reality and it is true to say that the move to Islamise, to ground public culture and law in the principles of the Shariʿa, has contributed to it. However, there is also something specifically modern, both in terms of the act itself and the implications of including it in the constitution. Indeed, the codification of such issues as the divinely revealed religions moves the Shariʿa away from its premodern or classical applications. Islamic law has been altered, reconfigured and nationalised since ethical norms related to the concept of the People of the Book – with more ambiguous legal implications – have been turned into enforceable legal norms. This has important implications for citizenship and community in the country and the region. Just as Peter van der Veer argued that religion becomes instrumental in the nation building process and is transformed and nationalised in that process, this chapter has illustrated that the concept of the divinely revealed religions has become nationalised in Egypt. In this sense, with the concept of the divinely revealed religions as forming a key part of its national identity, Egypt could be said to be caught up somewhere between Lebanon with its sectarianism and Tunisia with its French concept of the nation one and indivisible. The move to restrict the recognition of Bahaʾis in the public sphere can be seen to coincide with the consolidation and centralisation of the Egyptian state after 1952. The project of the modern nation state – including the forging of a national culture – involves getting entangled in the question of where to draw the line between religion and politics and what are legitimate and illegitimate minorities. This has involved the concept of public order. The concept of the divinely revealed religions which has included some and, by implication, excluded others has facilitated the project of Egyptian state and nation building. Yet the emergence of the concept of the divinely revealed religions is also the result of a profound political struggle in which other conceptions of citizenship have been side-lined. Such side-lining might well be ideologically motivated but it is also a strategic move by the military since the military has used the concept of the divinely revealed religions to bolster its Islamic credentials while at the same time moving against the Muslim Brotherhood. In the process, what has been established as hegemonic is a communitarian antiliberal concept of citizenship that is Islamically informed while anti-Islamist and which has the full cooperation of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

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Cavanaugh, William. The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Cole, Juan. “Rashid Rida and the Bahai Faith – a Utilitarian Theory of the Spread of Religion.” Arab Studies Quarterly 5 (Summer 1983): 276–291. Danchin, Peter and Saba Mahmood. “Immunity or Regulation: Antinomies of Religious Freedom.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 113 (Winter 2014): 130–159. Elsässer, Sebastian. The Coptic Question in the Mubarak Era. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Emon, Anver M. Religious Pluralism and Islamic Law: Dhimmis and Others in the Empire of Law. Oxford University Press, 2012. Fattal, Antoine. Le Statut legal des non-musulmans en pays d’islam. Recherches Publiées sous la Direction De l’institute de lettres orientales de Beyrouth. Vol. 10, B ­ eyrouth: Imprimerie Catholique, 1958. Fegiery, Moataz El and Ragab Saad. “Citizenship in Post-Awakening Egypt: Power Shifts and Conflicting Perceptions,” edited by Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, 2014. Ferrecchia, Jenna. “Awr Daily Overview, September 2, 2013: Catholic and Evangelical Churches Welcome Articles 2, 3, of Amended Constitution.” Arab-West Report, ­November 27, 2013. Ferrecchia, Jenna. “What Do the Copts Want in the Constitution?/Sarkha: A New Christian Protest Movement.” Arab-West Report, October 28, 2013. Hallaq, Wael. The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Hanley, Will. “When Did Egyptians Stop Being Ottomans? An Imperial Citizenship Case Study.” In Multilevel Citizenship: Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism, edited by Willem Maas, 89–109. University of Pennslyvania Press, 2013. Hasan, S.S. Christians Versus Muslims in Modern Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Hurd, Elizabeth Shakman. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations. ­Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Husserl, Gerhart. “Public Policy and Ordre Public.” Virginia Law Review 25 (1938): 37–67. Huwaydi, Fahmi. There Is Democracy in Islam (Li-l-Islam Dimuqratiyya). Cairo: Markaz al-Ahrām, 1993. Ibn Kathir, Ismail Ibn Umar. Tafsir Ibn Kathir (Abridged). Translated by Shaykh SafiurRahman al-Mubarakpuri. 10 vols. Vol. 4, Riyadh: Darussalam, 2000. Ibn Naqqash. “The Jizya’s Meaning: Edict of Caliph Al-Amir Bi-Ahkam Illah (1101–1130).” In The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, edited by Bat Yeʾor, 188–189. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson, 1985.

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Sedra, Paul. “Copts and the Power over Personal Status.” Jadaliyya (December 3, 2012). Scott, Rachel. “Managing Religion and Renegotiating the Secular: The Muslim Brotherhood and Defining the Religious Sphere,” Politics & Religion 7 (2014): 51–78. Tabari. History of the Prophets and Kings (Taʾrikh Al-Rusul Wa Al-Muluk). Translated by Khalid Blankinship. 39 vols. Vol. 11 (The Challenge to Empires), Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York, 1993. Tadros, Mariz. “Vicissitudes in the Entente between the Coptic Orthodox Chruch and the State in Egypt (1952–2007).” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41 (2009): 269–287. Tadros, Mariz. Copts at the Crossroads: The Challenges of Building Inclusive Democracy in Contemporary Egypt. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2013. Veer, Peter van der. Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Interviews

Muhammad ʿImara interviewed by the author. Cairo, 2007. Muhammad Habib interviewed by the author. Cairo, 2007. Muhammad Salim al- ʿAwwa interviewed by the author. Cairo, 2003. Fahmi Huwaydi interviewed by the author. Cairo, 2003. Fahmi Huwaydi interviewed by the author. Cairo, 2007.

part 3 Practices of Citizenship

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chapter 15

The Effects of Patronage Systems and Clientelism on Citizenship in the Middle East Robert Springborg The Arab upheavals have focused attention on obstacles to the realisation of democratic citizenship. Prominent among those perceived obstacles is pervasive patronage, also known as political clientelism.1 As in other authoritarian settings, Arab activists and scholars of the region have contended that political clientelism has constituted a “functional pillar” of these authoritarian regimes, which have relied upon patronage “in lieu of popular legitimacy to maintain political stability.” Based on this assessment it has been commonly assumed, as it previously was in Africa, that with democratisation, “predatory rule, corruption and clientelistic practices would inevitably recede.”2 In the event, however, democratic transitions in Africa and other regions have generally not been accompanied by dramatic reductions in political clientelism, thereby giving rise to considerable scholarly research explaining its persistence and impact. One line of argument in this research is that clientelism in general and political clientelism in particular is a “deeply ingrained political practice,” so “changes in formal political rules” are epiphenomenal, and are not capable of altering the “underlying structural dynamics.”3 Students of the Arab world, a region in which the charge of “Orientalism” has made scholars more wary of what may appear to be “essentialist” explanations than researchers focused on other regions, may well prefer an alternative argument put forward in the literature. This argument suggests that political competition resulting from democratic transitions, manifested most notably in the need to gain electoral support, exacerbates political clientelism. This argument is typically accompanied by the explanation that clientelism is to be found in 1 That citizenship has assumed centrality in political struggles in the wake of these upheavals is asserted, for example, by a prominent opposition figure in Egypt, George Ishak, in a long interview on the subject in the country’s leading English language publication. See Dina ­Ezzat, “The Road Towards Full Citizenship,” Al-Ahram Weekly, January 12, 2014, http://weekly .ahram.org.eg/News/5113/17/The-road-towards-full-citizenship.aspx. 2 Nicolas van de Walle, “The Democratization of Political Clientelism in Sub-Saharan Africa” (paper presented at the 3rd European Conference on African Studies, Leipzig, June 4–7, 2009), 2–4. 3 Ibid. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_017

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most if not all political systems, with the consequence that it is variance in its magnitude and location, rather than its presence or absence, that provide the appropriate foci for investigation. A common finding of such investigations is that democratisation shifts clientelism from the executive toward the legislative branch and from “political notables” to political parties.4 A third set of explanations for clientelism’s persistence is based on the proposition that it results primarily not from the nature of the political system, but from the society or the economy in which the polity is situated. Societies cleaved by ethnic, religious, linguistic, tribal, or other divisions are seen to be more conducive to clientelism than are more homogeneous ones. Backward, poor economies are similarly seen to breed more clientelism than advanced, industrial ones. As far as impact is concerned, the key issue is whether clientelism is generally functional or dysfunctional for the polity and for economic development. One view is that clientelism is inherently inimical to democratic citizenship, so it is both politically and economically dysfunctional as it impedes the vital accountability that only the proper exercise of citizens’ rights can provide. Unaccountable political and economic elites are inevitably authoritarian, corrupt, and disdainful of citizens, clients, and consumers. Contrasting views are that political clientelism militates against economic stratification through the very exchange of material goods for political support inherent in patronage systems, and that the mobilisation of citizens through patronage based organisations provides them with political access, and hence at least indirect influence over policies, including those with distributional consequences. Yet another favourable view of political clientelism is that it can serve as sociopolitical glue to bind together frail political systems and even nations threatened by descent into violence, or recovering from it. Arabs and Middle Easterners more generally thus confront, in the wake of recent upheavals, the complex issue of how clientelism impacts their polities, economies, and societies and what, if anything, can be done either to reduce or eliminate it or to render its effects more positive, including those relevant to democratic citizenship. Since democratic transitions have progressed further in most other emerging regions, their inhabitants and the scholars studying them have been grappling with this issue for considerably longer. Not surprisingly, scholars of the Middle East and North Africa (mena) have begun to draw upon this comparative research to better understand clientelism and its 4 Ibid., and Nicolas van de Walle, “The Path from Neopatrimonialism: Democracy and ­Clientelism in Africa Today,” in Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond, ed. Daniel Bach and Mamoudou Gazibo (New York: Routledge, 2011).

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i­mpacts in their region of interest. This contemporary comparative research and, indeed, much of that on clientelism previously conducted in the mena itself is, however, more likely to be suggestive than definitive in the exploration of relationships between clientelism and citizenship in the mena. One limitation on the direct applicability to the mena of research findings from other global regions reflects the fact that this research necessarily addresses the particularities of the region of its focus. So, for example, the voluminous research on clientelism in Latin America is concerned overwhelmingly with relationships between clientelism and political parties, most notably as regards elections, obviously reflecting the comparatively developed state of democratic political contestation in that region. By contrast, literature on post-communist states tends to be concerned with relationships between clientelism and statist economies, including their residuals in the forms of perceived entitlements, networks of former security officers, and weak private sectors. Scholars studying very poor societies, whether in Africa, South Asia, Oceania, or elsewhere, frequently focus on the relationship between clientelism and development programs, commonly those operated by international donors. While these ­regional literatures inspired by the particular political and economic development challenges each faces may provide insights into clientelism and its impacts in the mena, none can provide an “idiot’s guide.” Nor, surprisingly enough, is much of the mena-specific literature directly relevant to the investigation of the relationship between clientelism and citizenship. The bulk of research on clientelism in the mena has been anthropological in nature, concerned primarily with describing the phenomenon in specific settings rather than with generalising to the level of the polity or economy. Moreover, much of this research has juxtaposed clientelism to programmatic organisations or rule-bound personal and institutional relationships, suggesting that whereas clientelism is an indigenous, “native” pattern, the latter are frail western imports. Implicit in this approach is the proposition that clientelism is culturally rooted, as reference to the Arabic vocabulary associated with it is claimed to attest; and that clientelism provides alternative, indigenous methods for performing functions discharged by impersonal, “rational-legal” structures in developed democracies. Much of this literature, in other words, is “essentialist,” in that it interprets clientelism as a culturally based, adaptive mechanism that enables these societies, economies, and polities to deal with challenges resulting initially from colonialism and now from globalisation. Frequently it emphasises the alleged positive aspects of clientelism, possibly because of an underlying assumption that in the authoritarian settings of the mena, the best one can hope for is wily citizens, capable of

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extracting patronage from elites, but not aspiring to the unattainable goal of equality, whether of rights or resources.5 Mindful of these caveats about the applicability of these bodies of research to the relationship of clientelism to citizenship in the contemporary mena, I shall draw selectively upon them, as well as on some related macro-data modelling, in an effort to identify causes of the persistence of clientelism globally and the implications of these causal explanations for clientelism in the mena. I shall then speculate on clientelism’s consequences for the potential emergence of democratic citizenship in the region, before turning to the issue of whether and how clientelism could be rendered more supportive of democratic citizenship in the mena.

Socio-Economic Explanations of Political Clientelism

From “Dense” to Impersonal, Instrumental Clientelism Some of the earliest social science research on clientelism was conducted in the mena.6 Most of it was concerned with voluntary, dyadic, face-to-face personal relationships between unequals. As with similar research elsewhere at the time, much of it was concentrated in rural, low-income areas with limited market development.7 Referred to as “dense clientelism” because it included a strong affective dimension and tended to persist over time, even generations, its existence was explained primarily in terms of traditional, unequal relations reinforced by the exchange of material resources for loyalty and by associated status differentials. Dense clientelism was generally assumed to be a subculture’s coping strategy in the face of needs unmet due to weak states and inadequate markets. It was viewed as a pre-modern relationship preserved because of its inherent appeal within such subcultures, and because relationships of

5 See, for example, Diane Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); and Anne Marie Baylouny, Privatizing Welfare in the Middle East: Kin Mutual Aid Associations in Jordan and Lebanon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010). 6 See, for example, Ernest Gellner and John Waterbury (eds.), Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies (London: Duckworth, 1977). For bibliographies of literature on clientelism in the Middle East, see Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and Luis Roniger, Patrons, Clients and Friends: Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University­ Press, 1984). 7 See, for example, Steffen W. Schmidt et. al., Friends, Followers and Factions: A Reader in Political Clientelism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).

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social, economic, and political exchange had yet to be dramatically impacted by the relatively weak nation-states in which they were situated.8 Not surprisingly Lebanon, with its laissez-faire economy and government, was the favourite setting for research into mena clientelism, with even urban subcultures there being assessed as penetrated and structured by dense patronclient relations.9 Some of the earliest efforts to link pervasive intra-communal clientelism to the type of nation-state that could be built upon it were also focused on Lebanon, which was the outstanding example of a “consociational democracy” in Arend Lijphart’s comparative assessment of states based on negotiation and compromise between elite patrons.10 Presaging later research, Lijphart and other early analysts of Lebanese hyphenated democracy noted its precarious nature, but observed that limited, unstable, yet largely peaceful democracy was preferable to endemic political violence. This trade-off has subsequently been witnessed in other post-conflict settings and continues to serve as one of the principal arguments in defence of political clientelism; a second best socio-political glue that holds fragmented socio-political orders together is better than a complete void of social capital that necessarily would be filled by violence or absolute tyranny. Just as Lebanon was not representative of mena states, its dense clientelism also came to be seen as unrepresentative of evolving political clientelism in the region. This “new” clientelism was increasingly impersonal, shorter-lived, and instrumental as a consequence of the extension of post-colonial state power into societies and economies. Elites in control of those states, typically military officers and their political allies, drew upon governmental resources to build clienteles, frequently in opposition to traditional patrons whose resource bases were directly attacked.11 It was more or less at this juncture, in the late 1970s, when the torch of research into clientelism passed from the hands of those studying the mena into those studying other regions, most notably 8 9 10

11

On dense clientelism, see Jonathan Fox, “The Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from Mexico,” World Politics 46 (1994): 151–84. Michael Johnson, Class and Client in Beirut: The Sunni Muslim Community and the Lebanese State, 1840–1985 (London: Ithaca Press, 1986). Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); and Arend Lijphart, “Consociational Democracy,” World Politics 21 (1969): 207–25, reprinted in Issues in Comparative Politics: A Text with Readings, ed. Robert J. Jackson and Michael B. Stein (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1971), 222–34; Michael Hudson, The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985). See, for example, Leonard Binder, In a Moment of Enthusiasm: Political Power and the ­Second Stratum in Egypt (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1978).

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Latin America and Africa. Scholars of these regions observed the unexpected emergence of a state-centred clientelism called into service by modernising authoritarian elites, and subsequently of party- and even civil-society-based clientelisms produced by democratic elites competing for political power through elections. The global study of clientelism thus shifted from its previous focus on the so-called dense, traditional variety, for which there tended to be a sort of nostalgic fondness among scholars, especially those of the mena, to instrumental clientelism. As the traditional societies and the dense clientelism within them withered away, the new concerns with clientelism became its role in authoritarian and democratic settings, hence the political causes of its persistence and pervasiveness. Interestingly, however, in recent years the argument that political clientelism associated with the expansion of state power is rooted at least in part in indigenous culture has enjoyed a comeback, albeit in a slightly modified form. Instrumental clientelism in this view is not just a product of modernising political elites seeking to expand their power, it is the result of “path dependence,” meaning the inheritance of cultural and historical factors. Bringing Culture Back in: Path Dependence and Mass Attitudes Having been pushed out the front door of respectable academic analysis by both comparative politics and political economy, culture as an independent variable, including various subcomponents such as political clientelism, has come in the back through so-called “path dependence.” Economic historians, some with interests in the mena, have probably contributed the most to this rediscovery of the contemporary impacts of cultures and the histories and institutions by which they are shaped. Acemoglu and Robinson, for example, have posited that “fixed national effects” explain both economic development and democratisation.12 These effects in their view are historical, institutional, and cultural in nature, although their primary focus is on institutional legacies and their economic and political consequences. Other research, however, has conceptualised culture as a mediating variable between historical and institutional legacies, in the first instance, and contemporary economic and political development performances in the second. Operationalisation of the cultural variable is through longitudinal comparative survey research which measures variations in mass attitudes that, in these researchers’ views, reflect different cultural norms and values. The primary assumption underlying the research is the same as that of Acemoglu and Robinson and other economic 12

Daren Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown, 2012).

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historians, namely that “a given society’s institutional and cultural heritage is remarkably enduring…” and its “religious and historical heritage leaves a lasting imprint.”13 Cultural traditions, in short, have returned as viable independent variables in social science research. Analyses of World Value Survey (wvs) and associated, more focused attitudinal survey data suggest to the team of scholars working with Robert Inglehart that the most vital cross-cultural variation can be conceptualised along two major axes – traditional versus secular-rational values, and a survival versus self-expression value.14 The survival value places a high priority on material welfare, as compared to those who value free choice as implied by the term “self-expression.” Cross-national attitudinal studies have repeatedly produced clusters of societies reflecting distinctive mixes of these allegedly core cultural values. The cluster of societies in which traditional and survival values most predominate is the Muslim-majority one, the majority of countries within which that were assessed in the wvs being in the mena. The conclusion drawn by these researchers is that cultural “path dependence” in these societies, as reflected in attitudes that value hierarchy and authority over autonomy, on the one hand, and access to resources over choices about public policies, on the other, comprises a major obstacle to their economic development and democratisation.15 Clientelism is not explicitly identified by these researchers as a correlate of the traditional and survival values so predominant in Muslim majority countries. Yet, since it embodies both these values, clientelism may well be more common in these settings. Clientelism in general, especially the dense variety noted as common in the mena in particular, is based, after all, on unequal, deferential relations. These in turn structure role behaviour and expectations in a manner consistent with the sub-dimensions of traditional thinking, key of which is the acceptance of authority, especially that of status superiors, such as religious, tribal, or clan leaders. As for the survival versus self-expression 13

14

15

Ronald F. Inglehart and Christian Welzel, “Changing Mass Priorities: The Link between Modernization and Democracy,” Perspectives on Politics 8 (2010): 551–67. For more ­information about the World Values Survey, see the wvs websites: http://www.worldvalues survey.com and http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp. For recent books produced by this team, see Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Cosmopolitan Communications: Cultural Diversity in a Globalized World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Ronald Inglehart, Islam, Gender, Culture and Democracy: Findings from the Values Surveys (Ontario: de Sitter Publications, 2004).

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dimension, political clientelism is based on the exchange of material resources for political loyalty, thereby affirming in individual value systems the dominance of “survival” over independent decision making and, indeed, the lack of importance for the latter. Votes produced through clientelism are choices for material rewards, not decisions about policies. In the Muslim countries of the mena, therefore, prevailing values appear more consonant with attitudes congruent with clientelism than appears to be the case for most if not all other global regions. An explanation of the mena’s “path dependence” in the form of lagging economic and political development might therefore be found in the mutually reinforcing roles played by clientelism and prevailing values. Rendered more potent by this synergy, “culture” in this setting could be imagined to pose significant obstacles to the development of effective rational-legal and programmatic focused governmental institutions and civil-society organisations, both of which are vital to economic growth and democratisation. In the absence of such organisations the exercise of democratic citizenship is necessarily limited. While this line of thinking is speculative and, in the alleged interactions between clientelism and values, goes beyond the work of those who have drawn upon the World Values Survey data, it is consistent with the trend towards “bringing culture back in” to the study of development, and it does provide a macro–micro linkage to help explain how culture produces particular types of behaviour.16 It may well be the case that an earlier generation of scholarship’s emphasis on clientelism, including its anchoring in prevailing value systems, was an appropriate focus, and might profitably be revived. Moreover, the strongly embedded nature of mena clientelism, reinforced as it appears to be by consonant values, may account in part for variations in relative importance attributed to dense as opposed to instrumental clientelism by scholars of different global regions. Latin Americanists, unlike mena specialists, became interested in political clientelism primarily as an unanticipated phenomenon that arose during and after democratic transitions. This “clientelism light,” in other words, may not have been preceded by a “clientelism heavy.” As for the mena, having never had, with the slight exception of Lebanon, a “clientelism 16

The case for this is made by Michael C. Hudson, “The Political Culture Approach to Arab Democratization: The Case for Bringing it Back in, Carefully,” in Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World, vol. 1, ed. Rex Bryner et al. (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 61–76. For an example of the explanation of Arab authoritarianism as being culturally influenced, see Abdellah Hammoudi, Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

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light” as part of or consequence of a democratic transition, but only either a clientelism heavy or system of patrimonialism extending from authoritarian, incumbent elites, one might ask whether the independent variable should be conceived as the stage of political development, or as clientelism itself. For the Latin Americanists, it is clearly the former. But in the mena it might well be that dense clientelism and the values supporting it, further reinforced by ­regime-centred patrimonialism, have combined to prevent the light clientelism of the Latin American variety from emerging. The relative values of locally based, dense clientelism and central government patrimonialism might vary from one mena country to another. But it is not out of the question that dense clientelism is, at least in some countries, a key independent variable that has contributed substantially to preventing a lighter version, hence democratic citizenship, from evolving. Social Heterogeneity, Inequality, Economies, and Political Clientelism Evidence suggests that both vertical and horizontal cleavages are positively correlated with political clientelism. As regards the former, the impact of ethnic heterogeneity is best documented, as noted, for example, by van de Walle for Africa.17 Paul Stubbs and Siniša Zrinščak’s review of the “extended family” of “Mediterranean welfare states,” a category that includes the mena countries Israel and Turkey, leads them to conclude that “strong ethnic and regional cleavages also lead to a securitised state and the absence of a universal model of social protection cutting across these cleavages.”18 In other words, ethnicity and regionalism produce political communities with attenuated loyalties, which in turn foster states that use patronage as a socio-political glue to hold their relatively fragile political communities together and/or to reward the dominant ethnic/regional sub-communities. Indeed, one of the most frequently researched issues of contemporary political clientelism is the patronage strategies of political elites toward different constituencies. Are these elites better off to “reward the faithful” or to buy support from swing constituencies or even opponents? While the bulk of this research concerns politicians and voters in democracies with the key divides being party loyalties, some rationalchoice research of this type has been concerned with the strategies of elites 17 18

Van de Walle, “Democratization of Clientelism.” Paul Stubbs and Siniša Zrinščak, “Rethinking Clientelism, Governance and Citizenship in Social Welfare: The Case of Croatia,” (paper presented at ESPAnet Conference, Valencia, Spain, September 2011). The same point is made in Daniel C. Hallin and Stylianos Papathanassopoulos, “Political Clientelism and the Media: Southern Europe and Latin America in Comparative Perspective,” Media, Culture and Society 24 (2002): 175–95.

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in polities fragmented by vertical cleavages, especially of ethnic and religious natures. So, for example, one recent investigation in the mena has been of the patronage strategies of political elites in Lebanon and Yemen.19 Corstange’s finding is that in these vertically fragmented socio-political systems incumbent elites have little incentive to reward co-religionists, whose loyalties are virtually guaranteed by virtue of their sect membership.20 This logic is then used to explain the paradox of the relatively large incidence of poverty found within sects that enjoy substantial or even dominant political power, in this case Sunnis in Lebanon and Shiʿis in Yemen. The rationale of patronage in vertically divided societies, in other words, reinforces horizontal cleavages. As for direct relationships between political clientelism and horizontal cleavages, they appear to be mutually supportive. Inequality is both a cause and consequence of political clientelism. Joshi and Mason, for example, have found a strong negative correlation between the proxy indicator of clientelism, which is the percentage of rural families whose specific land tenure relationships render them dependent on landlord patrons, and the state’s investments in basic services.21 Van de Walle summarises political clientelism’s impact in A ­ frica as having “overwhelmingly favoured a highly circumscribed socio-­political elite and was rarely economically redistributive in a meaningful sense… We know this because we see that the large number of elite offices in the capital did not translate into a large number of lower level patronage positions, or extensive services in the hinterlands.” He further observes that “evidence of the lack of clientelistic redistribution can be gleamed from the region’s very high and ­persistent levels of social inequality.”22 Formal modelling undertaken of the economic effects of political clientelism in a democracy reveals that it suppresses “both redistributive policies and economic development.”23 Jorge Andrés Gallego and Rafal Raciborski found “a two-way 19

Daniel Corstange, The Price of a Vote: Ethnic Clientelism in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming); and Daniel Corstange, “Vote Buying under Competition and Monopsony: Evidence from a List Experiment in Lebanon” (Paper delivered to the annual conference of the American Political Science Association, Washington, d.c., August, 2010). 20 Ibid. 21 Mahdav Joshi and John T. Mason, “Peasants, Patrons, and Parties: The Tension between Clientelism and Democracy in Nepal,” International Studies Quarterly 55 (2011): 151–75. See also their “Land Tenure, Democracy and Insurgency in Nepal,” Asian Survey 47 (2007) 3: 393–414. 22 Van de Walle, “Democratization of Clientelism.” 23 Luis Fernando Medina and Susan Stokes, “Monopoly and Monitoring: An Approach to Political Clientelism,” in Patrons, Clients, and Policies, ed. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 68–83.

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relation between clientelism and income inequality and poverty. In a poor society in which income inequality is high, clientelism will be a natural outcome. Once clientelism is established, it is harder for democracy to redistribute income…”24 In his systematic review of the literature, Allen Hicken reports a strong negative correlation between levels of national wealth and the existence of political clientelism.25 Stokes and Medina argue that political clientelism leads to economic inefficiency because it discourages the government from pursuing growth.26 It should be noted, however, that various researchers, especially those focused on specific communities, have found that intense political competition in democratic settings can lead political clientelism to have a redistributive effect. María José Álvarez-Rivadulla, for example, reported that in Montevideo “some squatter neighbourhoods have achieved their right to the city” as a result of establishing face-to-face relations with politicians driven by “great competition for the votes of the urban poor in the periphery of the city.”27 Overall, however, the research findings are of causal relationships between vertical cleavages and clientelism, between vertical and horizontal cleavages, between horizontal cleavages and clientelism, and between clientelism and horizontal cleavages. Clientelism, in other words, seems to prosper in heterogeneous, unequal societies and to reinforce that inequality, while depressing the rate of economic growth. Intense democratic competition appears to be the one factor that may ameliorate the negative distributional and economic impacts of political clientelism. The type of economic system seems also to be relevant to the degree of political clientelism present. In a nutshell, the greater the government’s share of the economy, the greater the amount of political clientelism. Indeed, that relationship appears in some research to even border on the tautological, as it relies upon the proportion of public employment as the proxy measure for political clientelism.28 As with the relationship between inequality and clientelism, that between size of government and clientelism also seems to be in both directions. Judith Chubb, for example, notes, in the case of Italy, that political parties’ need for patronage resources drives them to sustain governmental employment, even as an expanding public debt further intensifies the 24

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Jorge Andrés Gallego and Rafal Raciborski, “Clientelism, Income Inequality, and Social Preferences: An Evolutionary Approach to Poverty Traps,” Unpublished paper, University of Bogota, 2007, http://ideas.repec.org/cgi-bin/refs.cgi. Allen Hicken, “Clientelism,” Annual Review of Political Science 14 (2011): 289–310. Stokes and Medina, “Monopoly and Monitoring.” María José Álvarez-Rivadulla, “Clientelism or Something Else?: Squatter Politics in ­Montevideo,” Latin American Politics and Society 54 (2012): 37–63. For a review of these indicators, see Hicken, “Clientelism.”

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economic crisis.29 Numerous studies have also demonstrated a correlation between corruption and political clientelism.30 Therefore, large, corrupt governments are apparently ideal hosts for political clientelism, which in return acts to sustain those very governments.

Politics, Administration and Political Clientelism

Strange as it may seem, political clientelism is explained as a consequence of governments being weak, of them being authoritarian, and of them being democratic. It is as if it is an all-purpose political solvent, applicable across the range of political systems, from primitive, weak states to established democracies. It holds communities together in the absence of an effective national market and government. It provides the sinews through which authoritarian rulers assert themselves over their states and societies. And it provides the means for mobilisation of citizens by political parties and civil society organisations within democratising and democratic polities. Thus, as noted above, it is more the location of political clientelism in the political system rather than its existence or magnitude that appears to result from the nature of the prevailing political order. In primitive political economies local “big men” operate patronage machines which are autonomous from or only slightly dependent upon government, and for which the necessary material resources are predominantly private, such as those generated from access to land. This form of clientelism was common throughout the mena prior to the consolidation of control by colonial and post-colonial states and continues to exist in national peripheries into which the tentacles of the state do not reach, or from which they have withdrawn. Anne Marie Baylouny, for example, argues that state retrenchment in the Levant that has resulted from the adoption of neo-liberal policies has resulted in a resurgence of political clientelism within pre-existing social formations, most notably those based in extended kinship.31 Diane Singerman 29

Judith Chubb, Patronage, Power and Poverty in Southern Italy: A Tale of Two Cities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). See also Judith Chubb, “The Social Bases of an Urban Political Machine: The Case of Palermo,” Political Science Quarterly 96 (1981): 107–25. 30 For summaries of the literature on the relationship between clientelism and corruption, see Derick Brinkerhof and Arthur Goldsmith, “Good Governance, Clientelism and Patrimonialism: New Perspectives on Old Problems,” International Public Management Journal 7 (2004): 163–86; and Hicken, “Clientelism.” 31 Baylouny, Privatizing Welfare in the Middle East.

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has chronicled the activities of clientelistic networks that have emerged in the informal communities of Cairo in the wake of the erosion of the social contract that formerly underpinned governmental provision of goods and services.32 In these and other accounts of clientelism on the ever expanding peripheries of shrinking statist political economies in the mena, notable in its absence is evidence of national political entrepreneurship, other than that by Islamist organisations, a topic to be taken up below. As the state recedes there is little evidence that independent patrons, either as individual politicians or political parties, have sought to move into the breach, mobilising citizens through clientelism. Presumably this attests primarily to the relative absence of democratic space in which to construct clientelistic networks, hence the lack of incentives for such politically entrepreneurial behaviour. Political clientelism under authoritarian, non-oil rich mena governments thus seems to have traced a bell-shaped curve elongated on the right side. It expanded rapidly as these post-colonial states consolidated their control, typically through the institutional vehicles of the military, security services, single party, and the bureaucracy. In this expansionary phase clientelism extended down into urban and rural peripheries and served to mobilise populations previously excluded both economically and politically. It then began a long period of contraction in which it first ebbed away from the socio-economic peripheries and then from the peripheries of the state itself, leaving little more of the state than its “deep” components enmeshed in tight patronage networks. Not surprising then were the Arab upheavals, products primarily of the decay resulting from ever-shrinking clientelism. In those oil rich mena states where resources have remained sufficient to service the sprawling clientelist networks that grew in tandem with the expansion of oil production, there have been no upheavals. Political clientelism, at least in the mena context, thus seems to provide the vital base for authoritarianism, which, in its absence, cannot easily persist. The implication of research on Arab voting is that authoritarian leaders appreciate this nexus. In Jordan, according to Ellen Lust, and in Egypt, according to Lisa Blaydes, leaders have turned adversity, in the form of their feeling compelled to hold elections, to their advantage, in that they have been able to use those elections to renew their rule.33 These and other Arab authoritarian states have 32 Singerman, Avenues of Participation. 33 Ellen Lust, “Elections under Authoritarianism: Preliminary Lessons from Jordan,” Democratization 13 (2006): 455–70. Lust argues elsewhere that “elections provide elites and their supporters an opportunity to compete over special access to a limited set of state resources that they can then distribute to their clients – a process that I call ‘competitive­

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been able to preserve at least for elections the governmental monopoly over patronage, denying potential competitors access to either private or public resources that could be converted into patronage. Citizens in Jordan, for example, vote primarily if they feel they can obtain material resources or wasta (influence/access) from candidates, not because of partisan identifications or policy preferences.34 Access to state resources as mediated by state-dependent politicians is thus the primary motivation for participation in elections. It is, moreover, not just the democratic potential of elections that is undermined by patronage. Research on the attitudes of civil society activists in oil rich Arab states demonstrates that they are more likely to support incumbent authoritarian governments and oppose democratic transitions than are non-activists, which is precisely the opposite of the anticipated and usual relationship.35 Again the key explanatory factor is political clientelism. In this case it takes the form of patronage umbrellas extended over civil society, such that its organisations are rendered dependent upon royal patronage. Civil society activists are thus either complete opportunists, using their activism to garner resources, or partial opportunists, in that they are willing to trade subordination to royal will to attain some independently desired objective. In either case their loyalty is ensured through clientelist networks that extend up into the regime. Providing ample evidence of the role of political clientelism under authoritarian government, the Arab world offers few examples of it under democracy, other than the case of Lebanon mentioned above. Authoritarian Arab states have jealously guarded their hegemony over patronage. They have, for example, been willing to suffer the economic consequences of retarding the growth of independent financial systems, whether secular or Islamic, out of the fear that more robust, independent financial institutions could generate patronage resources for oppositions.36 In some national instances it was probably the example of Turkey that has caused them to be so wary of the growth of financial mediation. There the accumulation of capital by the so-called Anatolian Tigers after Turgut Özal became Prime Minister in 1983 provided the politically

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clientelism’.” See Ellen Lust, “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East,” Journal of Democracy 20 (2009): 122–35. Lisa Blaydes, Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Lust, “Elections under Authoritarianism.” Justin Gengler et. al., “Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab Gulf,” Foreign Policy (July 25, 2011), http://mideastafrica.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/07/25/civil_society_and _democratization_in_the_arab_gulf. For comparative assessments of the denial of the “structural power of capital” to private actors in mena countries, see Clement Henry Moore and Robert Springborg, Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

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relevant resources upon which the Islamist movement first built its electoral machine that ultimately brought it into government in 2002. This was a classic example of political clientelism driving democratisation, thereby constituting a profoundly negative learning experience for mena authoritarians.37 Arab Islamists have not enjoyed equivalent political or economic space in which they could draw upon legally obtained, visible capital to support the growth of a clientelist network to underpin a political party, similarly legal and above ground. Instead, having typically originated as national liberation movements and operating in quasi-legal environments at best in post-colonial states, in which their capital necessarily remained largely hidden, even offshore, Arab Islamist movements remained inwardly focused, conspiratorial, and profoundly suspicious of democracy, willing to use it when it suited their purposes but not committed to it as a system of values or government. In fact, the use of material resources by Islamists for political purposes is probably not best thought of as political clientelism, unless there is such a thing as dense, dense clientelism. Unlike secular, democratic politicians who “buy” votes with patronage, Arab Islamists seek to buy souls through total commitment, including intense mutual financial relationships. They are in this sense Marxist, in that they implement the notion of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Just as the individual must commit resources to the organisation, so the organisation is at least partially responsible for the financial welfare of its members. This then is not the unequal, dyadic, possibly transitory exchange relationship at the core of clientelism. It is instead the structure of a totalitarian organisation seeking to control not just the votes of its members, but their lives. So Arab Islamism does not provide a test case of democratisation through the privatisation of patronage. Moreover, because Islamism has occupied much if not most of the opposition political space in Arab polities, it has squeezed democratic opposition between itself and governments, leaving relatively little room for alternative political mobilisation, to say nothing of limiting the possibilities for other, independent opposition elements to generate patronage resources. Probably because the Arab world has had comparatively few free and fair elections and almost none outside of Lebanon that have resulted in changes of government, it has not provided a setting for investigations into the ­relationship between electoral systems and clientelism. Elsewhere, however, this relationship has been studied. The global evidence summarised by Miquel 37

For a summary of the development of the structural power of capital in Turkey following the 1980 coup, its relevance to that country’s politics, and its use as a model for Egypt, see Robert D. Springborg, “Egypt’s Future: Yet Another Turkish Model?” The International Spectator 49 (2014): 1–6.

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Pellicer and Eva Wegner is that when “clientelistic parties are just collections of local ‘notables’, these parties are more successful in majoritarian systems than in proportional ones. In proportional systems with higher district magnitudes, voters are hardly pivotal in electing their local patron and so they have more incentives to vote for the programmatic ones.”38 In the Arab world, first past the post, single member districts are more common than voting systems based on proportional representation. In Egypt, for example, the issue as to which system should be used has been politically sensitive since the 1980s when elections first began to assume some political importance. Twice the Supreme Constitutional Court has overturned elections on the grounds that they were held according to unconstitutional election laws. In the conflict over the electoral system following the military’s overthrow in July 2013 of the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Muhammad Mursi, the military and its supporters backed a majoritarian, single member district system, clearly seeking to maximise the electoral utility of the state patronage they would control. In the event a compromise solution, whereby two-thirds of candidates would be elected in such districts and one-third according to proportional representation of candidates standing on party lists, was adopted. This issue has long been contested in Lebanon as well, where multi-member districts and the lack of proportional representation have, despite frequent changes of election laws, generally maximised the value of patronage. Another finding of research on the relationship between government and political clientelism is that the quality of public administration is inversely related to the amount of clientelism, i.e., the better the bureaucracy, the less clientelism there is.39 This, of course, begs the question of whether improving public administration reduces clientelism, or reducing clientelism paves the way for enhancing the quality of that administration. The general thrust of the research reports the former finding, with the usual argument being that fostering the growth of impersonal and effective executive administrations beyond the reach of those who would use it for clientelistic purposes, is an, if not the, most effective means of both curtailing the practice and improving the quality of governance.40 Aid agencies have commissioned various studies 38

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Miquel Pellicer and Eva Wegner, “Electoral Rules and Clientelistic Parties: A Regression Discontinuity Approach,” International Quarterly Journal of Political Science 8 (2013): 339–71. For a summary of this literature, see Hicken, “Clientelism.” On the relationship between clientelism and bureaucratic performance, as mediated by citizenship, see Aaron Schneider and Rebeca Zúniga-Hamlin, “A Strategic Approach to Rights: Lessons from Clientelism in Rural Peru,” Development Policy Review 23 (2005): 567–84. See also Philip Oxhorn, Clientelism or Empowerment? The Dilemma of State Decentralization for Securing Peace and Development, unpublished paper, McGill University, n.d.

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of ­bureaucratic clientelism in the hopes of ameliorating at least its effects on their programs, if not the broader consequences of the malady of clientelism.41 Within the research community, however, there seems to be resignation in the face of the inevitability of clientelism in large bureaucracies, especially in developing countries. Hicken, for example, refers to inter-correlations between clientelism, size of public bureaucracies, inefficiencies of those bureaucracies, corruption, and budget deficits. As mentioned above, the most commonly used proxies for clientelism are the relative sizes of government in the economy and the public sector wage bill.42 Considerable research also demonstrates a negative relationship between clientelism in the civil service and business dynamism. A survey of Jordanian businessmen, for example, revealed that the need to cultivate clientelistic relations with bureaucrats was emphasised by nearly all respondents, as was the deleterious consequences for their business of that need.43 Yet while clientelism appears to be an almost inevitable by-product of large government and bloated public administrations, at least in developing countries, it has also been associated with the downsizing of the government’s role in the economy, as reported, for example, by Anne Marie Baylouny, also for Jordan.44 Thus, attempts to reduce the scope of government and size of civil services may have the unintended consequence of driving clientelism into civil societies, although there it may be less effective at converting public into private goods than when it infests the civil service itself.

Causes and Consequences of Clientelism – Implications for the mena

The mena was a birthplace for research on political clientelism, presumably at least in part because of its comparative salience there. While it has now been investigated in virtually all regions of the globe, impressionistic evidence 41

See, for example, Marcus Loewe et al., The Impact of Favouritism on the Business Climate: A Study of Wasta in Jordan (Bonn: German Development Institute, 2007). 42 Hicken, “Clientelism.” 43 The findings of the study are as follows: “The study shows that the widespread use of wasta adversely affects the business climate in Jordan by making state-business relations inefficient and unfair. In addition, the study argues that the use of wasta persists (i) because many people are not aware of the fact that they can reach many of their goals without wasta, (ii) because there is little incentive to refrain from using it, (iii) because of socio-cultural norms which keep it in existence, and (iv) because of Jordan’s political system, which benefits the political elite.” Loewe et al., “The Impact of Favoritism on the Business Climate.” 44 Baylouny, Privatizing Welfare in the Middle East.

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would suggest that it remains particularly prevalent in the mena. Moreover, whereas the locus of clientelism seems to have shifted from executive branches to legislatures, political parties, and civil society organisations in tandem with democratisation in other regions, in the mena it remains concentrated in public administrations and ancillary institutions under the control of presidents and monarchs. The underlying force of path dependency in the mena in the form of cultural and institutional legacies, buttressed by deeply seated values, has not been diverted by either democratisation or rapid, broadly-based economic growth, because neither has occurred. In addition, the above review of socio-economic, political, and administrative factors associated with, if not in fact causes of, clientelism, has produced a list of such factors that seem present in the mena in greater measure than most if not all other regions. The region is remarkably heterogeneous ethnically and religiously and by virtue of various extended kinship groupings, including tribes. Although poverty in the mena is not as widespread as in South Asia or Africa, in some mena countries, such as Yemen and Sudan, as much as half the populations live in poverty, while in the largest Arab country, Egypt, now almost 30 per cent lives in abject poverty as measured by income of less than $1 daily. The mena is also not the worst region for inequality, with even Latin America having more unequal distributions of incomes and assets, but the mena nevertheless is afflicted with high and growing inequality. Four of the ten richest persons in Africa are Egyptians, for example, where in the southern half of that country more than half the inhabitants live on less than $2 per day. Economic dependence on government, as measured by public employment as a percentage of the labour force and/or by government-subsidised consumption goods as a proportion of all consumption, is higher in the mena than in other regions, including post-communist ones. The mena overall has a relatively small middle class and a particularly small entrepreneurial middle class, as private business activity is comparatively weak. gdp growth per capita in the Arab core of the mena has for a generation lagged behind the average for emerging regions, placing it below the major competitors of Africa, Latin America, and East Asia. The mena’s socio-economic configuration, in sum, is remarkably, possibly uniquely, conducive to political clientelism. The region’s governments and politics are similarly clientelism-friendly. As suggested by virtually all indicators, mena governments are comparatively authoritarian, large, and inefficient. On what is possibly the most standard measure of authoritarianism, which is the World Bank’s “Voice and Accountability” indicator, the mena’s annual scores since 1997, the first year the Bank published its governance indicators, has placed it at or next to the bottom of

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the world’s regions, contesting only with Sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia for the annual booby prize. While the region as a whole does better on the Bank’s “government effectiveness” indicator, if one excludes the gcc states, Israel, and Turkey, again the score is typically at or near the bottom for all regions. Government revenues as a percentage of gdp and public employment as a percentage of total employment, the standard indicators of size of government, place mena governments at the top of the pile. These three characteristics of government – authoritarian, large, and inefficient – are noted in comparative research as being the most congenial to political clientelism. They are not, however, the only ones, nor the only ones present in magnitude in the mena. Government centralisation and restricted access to information are two other factors conducive to the prevalence of political clientelism concentrated in the executive, both of which characterise governance in the mena. Few governments in the world are more centralised than Arab ones, which have for years resisted internal and external efforts to decentralise.45 The region is “info-shy,” especially as regards government finances, for which accurate data is notoriously difficult to obtain.46 It is common practice for ministries and state-owned enterprises to be used as conduits for patronage, most particularly during elections, a practice made possible by centralisation and lack of public access to accurate government accounts. As for the political system, it is government heavy, opposition light. Opposition political parties have insufficient purchase within government to extract patronage from it with which to build clienteles. Governments have typically obstructed opposition efforts to generate autonomous patronage resources. Islamist organisations are more akin to Marxist-Leninist parties than to patronage based ones and their objectives appear to be to capture government, not democratise it. In sum then, government and politics in the mena, like its societies and economies, are extremely conducive to political clientelism, especially that centred in the executive branch.

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Since the early 1980s the United States Agency for International Development (usaid) has conducted at least four major decentralisation projects in Egypt, investing in them more than $1 billion. Local administration, including its financial and political dimensions, remains as centralised as it was before these activities commenced. The term “info-shy” was coined by Clement M. Henry in reference to Tunisia. For elaboration of it there and in other settings and the inadequacy of public accounts in the mena, see Clement M. Henry and Robert Springborg, Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

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Clientelism and Citizenship

With few exceptions, contemporary research on the relationship between clientelism and citizenship emphasises the former’s negative consequences for the latter, an ominous implication for the mena. According to Hicken, for example, clientelism reverses the accountability relationship fundamental to democracy in that voters have to surrender their rights, including that to hold government accountable, in order to participate. He further notes that clientelism is inimical to citizenship as it impedes the development of social trust and other attitudes and values associated with the exercise of its rights. Finally, he contends that democratic citizenship must operate through civil society organisations, including political parties, which are themselves democratic, not clientelistic.47 Gabriela Ippolito-O’Donnell carries the argument for the fundamental incompatibility of clientelism and citizenship yet further. She notes that clientelism absolutely precludes two fundamental rights of citizenship – equality of voting and autonomy of association – so it “undermines the realization of the underlying pillar of democracy, human agency.”48 She further argues that appreciation of the contradiction between clientelism and citizenship­is as old as democracy itself. Classical Athenians, for example, “considered clientelism and patronage inimical to democracy….and took specific measures to avoid clientelism and patronage in public life.”49 Athenians’ interpretation of clientelism as contradictory to democracy was grounded in their emphasis on freedom (eleutheria), which they defined as “freedom to do as you like or as you choose,” a condition they considered impossible to realise were citizens to accept the dependency and obligation entailed by clientelism and patronage.50 This theme of material dependency inherent in clientelism as inimical to citizenship runs through the literature. Schneider and Zuniga-Hamlin, for example, emphasise the denial of material rights that results from clientelism, noting that clients “are not citizens with rights to well-being, but dependents upon patrons from whom they extract a meagre surplus.”51 This theme is also developed by Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith, who claim that “the rationale through 47 48

Hicken, “Clientelism.” Gabriela Ippolito-O’Donnell, “Political Clientelism and the Quality of Democracy” (­ paper presented at the annual conference of the International Political Science Association, ­Fukuoka, Japan, July 9–13, 2006). 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. Oxhorn also emphasises the agency component of citizenship as essential, contrasting it with “citizenship as cooptation.” See his “Clientelism or Empowerment?” 51 Schneider and Zuniga-Hamlin, “A Strategic Approach to Rights.”

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which the clientelistic relationship is maintained – primacy to the distribution of individual, selective benefits to citizens, to the detriment of the provision of collective goods, is itself a prescription for venal use of state resources.”52 In their study of southern European clientelism, Hallin and Papathanassopoulos note that the exchange of access to social resources for deference and support is a form of social organisation “contrasted with forms of citizenship in which access to resources is based on universalistic criteria and formal equality before the law.”53 John Cox’s study of clientelism in the Solomon Islands concludes that “Access to basic services, such as primary schooling, should be a basic entitlement of citizenship and not contingent on political support…” He further notes that the proposition that ngos or donor-funded programs can and should fill these service gaps, which typically happens in the mena, ignores the negative implications of such programs for citizenship. “Without the experience of entitlement to basic services, no ethos of citizenship capable of subverting clientelistic relationships and expectations is likely to emerge.”54 The general consensus that clientelism is antithetical to citizenship is reinforced by the further consensus that the transition from systems based on the former to the latter is inherently a lengthy process. In Jonathan Fox’s words, “it takes time and effort to transform clients into citizens.”55 Based on African experience, van de Walle notes that “civic organizations, the press, and the expectations of the citizenry will not immediately adjust to the new dispensation (i.e., democratic citizenship rights), but need to be nurtured and encouraged.” Democracy is not conceivable without political parties, but building democratic ones requires skill and time, to say nothing of conducive material conditions including economic growth and the reduction of poverty.56 Robert Gay argues that citizenship requires “distribution of state resources not by favor but by rights,” but goes on to claim that these are not the opposite conditions they may seem to be. A “semi-clientelism” that “removes coercion from the relationship” has at least in Brazil expedited an uneven but reasonably successful transition process.57 In sum, the overwhelming consensus is that clientelism is inherently inimical to citizenship and that the transition from the former to 52 53 54 55 56 57

Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith, “Good Governance, Clientelism and Patrimonialism.” Hallin and Papathanassopoulos, “Political Clientelism and the Media.” John Cox, “Active Citizenship or Passive Clientelism? Accountability and Development in Solomon Islands,” Development in Practice 19 (2009): 964–80. Fox, “The Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship.” Van de Walle, “Democratization of Clientelism” (emphasis added). Robert Gay, “Rethinking Clientelism: Demands, Discourses and Practices in Contemporary Brazil,” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 65 (1998): 7–24.

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the latter, even under favourable conditions, is likely to be a lengthy, complex process, with various intermediate steps along the way. For the mena, where clientelism is deeply embedded and conditions for the transition to citizenship are unfavourable, the implications seem ominous. This in turn raises the question of what, if anything, can be done to expedite the processes whereby clients are transformed into citizens.

Conclusion: Transforming mena Clients into Citizens

The mena’s “path dependency,” including the pervasiveness there of political clientelism, does not appear to lead directly to democratic citizenship. Nor has rapid development intervened to redirect the course of path dependency and to open new routes to citizenship. Political clientelism in the region remains a pillar of authoritarianism rather than having become a bridge to democracy. It also continues to foster the conditions that sustain it, key of which is material dependency, and hence to thwart the emergence of full citizenship. Yet other regions have confronted the challenge of transforming clients into citizens, so the task is not impossibly difficult. But it does require both broad, systemic changes to the political economy as well as more specifically related developments in governance and politics. The almost unique preponderance of government in the economies of the mena must be reduced by the growth of the structural power of private capital, which in turn can provide the material bases upon which independent “voice and accountability” can be built. As long as access to material resources lies overwhelmingly in the hands of those who control regimes, clientelism shall continue to obstruct the emergence of citizenship and the accountability dependent upon it. As for governance and politics, development of the full panoply of rights, institutions, and practices associated with democracy is ultimately necessary for citizenship to triumph over clientelism. Key in this regard is the emergence of the rule of law and associated institutions and practices capable of combatting corruption. This development in turn requires a re-balancing of the executive – ­legislative relationship in favour of the latter. Associated with that re-balancing is the creation of electoral systems that are free and fair and which militate against clientelism and in favour of programmatic political parties. Such structural changes constitute the necessary, if not sufficient conditions for the transition from clientelism to full citizenship. Awareness of citizenship rights and responsibilities is also lagging in the mena, so that deficiency also needs to be directly addressed.

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Meeting these preconditions seems overwhelmingly difficult in a mena already struggling with a host of development challenges recently intensified by political upheavals and violent conflicts. Awaiting the emergence of democratic capitalism as the precondition for converting clients to citizens is to suggest that many if not most of those mena citizens alive today will never exercise full citizenship rights. Again, however, the experience of other regions is relevant. Successful transitions tend to be those of gradual, uneven movement away from an executive centred toward more diversified clientelism. So a “fight fire with fire” strategy is a more realistic strategy, at least in the short and medium terms, as the preconditions for full blown democracy and associated citizenship are gradually established. Clientelistic political parties and civil society organisations that operate independently of government, for example, are certainly preferable to fully democratic ones which remain politically marginal. The hopes stimulated by upheavals for sudden, dramatic transitions to democratic citizenship are unlikely to be fulfilled anywhere in the mena, with the possible and partial exception of Tunisia. But the economic and political changes these upheavals have stimulated in the mena, to say nothing of the attitudinal changes they have both caused and reflect, will probably be seen in hindsight as signalling the beginning of the lengthy transition from clients to citizens in that region. Bibliography Acemoglu, Daren, and James A. Robinson. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. New York: Crown, 2012. Álvarez-Rivadulla, María José. “Clientelism or Something Else?: Squatter Politics in Montevideo.” Latin American Politics and Society 54 (2012): 37–63. Baylouny, Anne Marie. Privatizing Welfare in the Middle East: Kin Mutual Aid Associations in Jordan and Lebanon. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. Binder, Leonard. In a Moment of Enthusiasm: Political Power and the Second Stratum in Egypt. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1978. Blaydes, Lisa. Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Brinkerhof, Derick, and Arthur Goldsmith. “Good Governance, Clientelism and Patrimonialism: New Perspectives on Old Problems.” International Public Management Journal 7 (2004): 163–86. Chubb, Judith. “The Social Bases of an Urban Political Machine: The Case of Palermo.” Political Science Quarterly 96 (1981): 107–25.

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Chubb, Judith. Patronage, Power and Poverty in Southern Italy: A Tale of Two Cities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Cox, John. “Active Citizenship or Passive Clientelism? Accountability and Development in Solomon Islands.” Development in Practice 19 (2009): 964–80. Daniel, Corstange. “Vote Buying under Competition and Monopsony: Evidence from a List Experiment in Lebanon.” Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., August, 2010. Daniel, Corstange. The Price of a Vote: Ethnic Clientelism in the Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. Eisenstadt, Shmuel N., and Roniger Luis. Patrons, Clients and Friends: Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Ezzat, Dina. “The Road Towards Full Citizenship.” Al-Ahram Weekly, January 12, 2014 http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/News/5113/17/The-road-towards-full-citizenship .aspx. Fox, Jonathan. “The Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from Mexico.” World Politics 46 (1994): 151–84. Gallego, Jorge Andrés, and Rafal Raciborski. “Clientelism, Income Inequality, and Social Preferences: An Evolutionary Approach to Poverty Traps.” Unpublished paper,­University of Bogota, 2007. http://ideas.repec.org/cgi-bin/refs.cgi. Gellner, Ernest, and John Waterbury, eds. Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies. London: Duckworth, 1977. Hallin, Daniel C., and Stylianos Papathanassopoulos. “Political Clientelism and the Media: Southern Europe and Latin America in Comparative Perspective.” Media, Culture and Society 24 (2002): 175–95. Hammoudi, Abdellah. Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan A ­ uthoritarianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Henry, Clement M., and Robert Springborg. Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Hudson, Michael C. The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon. ­Boulder: Westview Press, 1985. Hudson, Michael C. “The Political Culture Approach to Arab Democratization: The Case for Bringing it Back in, Carefully.” In Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World, edited by Rex Bryner, Bahgat Korany, and Paul Noble, 61–76. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995. Hicken, Allen. “Clientelism.” Annual Review of Political Science 14 (2011): 289–310. Inglehart, Ronald. Islam, Gender, Culture and Democracy: Findings from the Values Surveys. Ontario: de Sitter Publications, 2004. Inglehart, Ronald F., and Christian Welzel. “Changing Mass Priorities: The Link between Modernization and Democracy.” Perspectives on Politics 8 (June, 2010): 551–67.

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Inglehart, Ronald F. Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Ippolito-O’Donnell, Gabriela. “Political Clientelism and the Quality of Democracy.” Paper presented at the annual conference of the International Political Science Association, Fukuoka, Japan, 2006, July 9–13. Johnson, Michael. Class and Client in Beirut: The Sunni Muslim Community and the Lebanese State, 1840–1985. London: Ithaca Press, 1986. Joshi, Mahdav, and John T. Mason. “Land Tenure, Democracy and Insurgency in Nepal.” Asian Survey 47 (2007): 393–414. Joshi, Mahdav, and John T. Mason. “Peasants, Patrons, and Parties: The Tension between Clientelism and Democracy in Nepal.” International Studies Quarterly 55 (2011): 151–75. Loewe, Marcus, Jonas Blume, Verena Schönleber, Stella Seibert, Johanna Speer, and Christian Voss. The Impact of Favouritism on the Business Climate: A Study of Wasta in Jordan. Bonn: German Development Institute, 2007. Lijphart, Arend. “Consociational Democracy.” World Politics 21 (1969): 207–25. Reprinted in Issues in Comparative Politics: A Text with Readings, 222–34, edited by Robert J. Jackson and Michael B. Stein. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1971. Lijphart, Arend. Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. Lust, Ellen. “Elections under Authoritarianism: Preliminary Lessons from Jordan.” Democratization 13 (2006): 455–70. Lust, Ellen. “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East.” Journal of Democracy 20 (2009): 122–35. Medina, Luis Fernando, and Susan Stokes. “Monopoly and Monitoring: An Approach to Political Clientelism.” In Patrons, Clients, and Policies, edited by Herbert Kitschelt and Steven Wilkinson, 68–83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. Cosmopolitan Communications: Cultural Diversity in a Globalized World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Oxhorn, Philip. “Clientelism or Empowerment? The Dilemma of State Decentralization for Securing Peace and Development.” Unpublished paper, McGill University, n.d. Pellicer, Miquel, and Eva Wegner. “Electoral Rules and Clientelistic Parties: A Regression Discontinuity Approach.” International Quarterly Journal of Political Science 8 (October, 2013): 339–371. Schmidt, Steffen W., James C. Scott, Carl Lande, and Laura Guasti. Friends, Followers and Factions: A Reader in Political Clientelism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Schneider, Aaron, and Rebeca Zúniga-Hamlin. “A Strategic Approach to Rights: Lessons from Clientelism in Rural Peru.” Development Policy Review 23 (2005): 567–84.

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Singerman, Diane. Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Stubbs, Paul, and Siniša Zrinščak. “Rethinking Clientelism, Governance and Citizenship in Social Welfare: The Case of Croatia.” Paper presented at ESPAnet Conference, Valencia, Spain, September 2011. van de Walle, Nicolas. “The Democratization of Political Clientelism in Sub-­Saharan Africa.” Paper presented at the 3rd European Conference on African Studies, Leipzig, June 4–7, 2009. van de Walle, Nicolas. “The Path from Neopatrimonialism: Democracy and Clientelism in Africa Today.” In Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond, edited by Daniel Bach and Mamoudou Gazibo, 111–23. New York: Routledge, 2011.

chapter 16

Female Citizenship and the Franchise in Kuwait after 2005 Rania Maktabi Introduction Kuwaiti women received political rights in 2005. Latecomers compared to women in Western liberal democracies as well as most women in the Middle East and North Africa (mena) region, the enfranchisement of women in Kuwait provides fresh theoretical and analytical insights into how the extension of political rights impacts on state and society in a fairly conservative albeit politically dynamic Gulf society.1 Tétreault anticipated that with the enfranchisement of Kuwaiti women “many new interests would be incorporated […] into the body politic.”2 Indeed, voting rights for women represents a change both in form, by expanding the size of the electorate,3 and its substance, by including female citizens as legitimate part of the demos, i.e. those who constitute full members of the polity.4 This chapter seeks to identify and explore which interests related to Kuwaiti women have been articulated publicly following their enfranchisement. Particular focus will be given to the various law proposals related to women that 1 In general, women in Western liberal democracies and in mena states were enfranchised by the first and second half of the 20th century respectively. Seven select dates from each region provide examples: Finland (1906), Norway (1913), Denmark (1915), usa (1920), Great Britain (1928), Spain (1931), and France (1944); mena states: Syria (1949), Lebanon (1952), Egypt (1956), Tunisia (1959), Morocco (1963), Jordan (1974), and Iraq (1980). See Inter-Parliamentary Union, Women’s suffrage: A World Chronology of the Recognition of Women’s Rights to Vote and to Stand for Election, http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/suffrage.htm. 2 Mary Ann Tétreault, “A State of Two Minds: State Cultures, Women, and Politics in Kuwait,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33 (2001): 216. 3 The suffrage more than doubled the number of eligible Kuwaiti voters, to around 340,000 in 2006 and 385,000 in 2009, with women comprising approximately 57 per cent of the electorate: Inter-Parliamentary Union, Kuwait, Historical Archives of Parliamentary Election Results, http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/arc/2171_06.htm. 4 Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 115–119.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_018

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were raised in parliament. The 2011 Arab Uprisings coincided with the K ­ uwaiti National Assembly’s (kna) thirteenth session, during which four women – ­Aseel al-Awadhi, Rola Dashti, Salwa al-Jassar and Maʾsouma al-­Moubarak – were elected as the first ever female MPs in 2009. What did they do as ­legislators, and how did their presence in parliament affect Kuwaiti politics more widely? Moreover, how did the 2011 Uprisings impact on female citizenship in K ­ uwait, and how did women’s enfranchisement relate to the changing dynamics of authoritarian rule in the following years? These questions are addressed by examining parliamentary documents from the time the four female MPs served, between May 2009 and December 2011.5 At the heart of this investigation lies an interest in looking in greater detail at how the principle of male guardianship over female citizens in state legislation was supported, challenged, or opposed through legal amendments proposed by MPs in the most liberal Gulf state during a volatile period in its modern history.6 I will first delineate theoretical insights regarding women’s rights and female citizenship in mena, before sketching the methodology behind the legalistic approach to scrutinising law proposals on women’s issues raised in the Kuwaiti parliament. I then point out how women have gained wider civic rights through courts and the media. In the conclusion I reflect on the impact of women’s enfranchisement on Kuwaiti society after 2011, and point out future areas of struggle related to widened female citizenship in Kuwait.

Female Citizenship in Post-2011 mena

The concept of “women’s rights” remains contested and analytically challenging in post-2011 mena. The notion of citizenship as a container of rights for women is problematised by the civic status of a female citizen, which – along with her position and agency within the kinship structure, household, market, and state – is mediated by and confined to varying degrees through her relationship to male kin.7 5 Parliamentary documents are accessible at the kna’s website (www.kna.kw) through the entry key ibhath fi-l-wathaʾiq al-barlamaniyya. I thank Mr. Ahmad al-Saffar, of the kna’s Documentation Unit, who instructed me on how to use the website during my fieldwork in Kuwait between February 20 and March 6, 2014. 6 The Gulf includes here member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (gcc): Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (uae). 7 Suad Joseph, “Gendering Citizenship in the Middle East,” in Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East, ed. Suad Joseph (Syracuse, n.y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000) 15–19; Valentine M. Moghadam, ed. From Patriarchy to Empowerment: Women’s Participation, Movements, and

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As of 2015, there is no such thing as an autonomous legal personhood for adult enfranchised female citizens in the majority of the 22 member states of The Arab League. But there certainly is for male adult citizens. Two states – ­Tunisia and Morocco – stand out as exceptions because of family laws8 that were codified in 1956 and 1957 and reformed in 1993 and 2004 respectively, which enable both female and male citizens to stand on fairly equal legal grounds when it comes to personal status, notably if inheritance issues are left out.9 The emphasis on female legal autonomy applied here necessitates a clarification of the distinction made between the terms “civic” and “civil”: “civic” denotes a person’s status and reflects legalistic aspects of personhood as defined in the state’s legislation, such as personal status laws, while “civil” implies material and immaterial rights a person is entitled to through the state’s registration and administration of a person’s particular civic status.10 The civic disenfranchisement of female citizens within mena, defined as women’s confined and contracted personhood as legal minors under the trusteeship of males, is my point of departure for theorising female citizenship. It here implies the set of civil, economic, and political rights as defined by the constitution, the state’s family law, nationality law, criminal law, and labour and social security laws. These laws structure the civic legal capacity and autonomy of a female citizen within the polity, and thereby regulate her civil and social rights as a citizen of the state.



8

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Rights in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia (Syracuse, n.y.: Syracuse University Press, 2007), see also Moghadam’s chapter in this volume; Center for Arab Women for Training and Research cawtar, “Al-Marʾa al-ʿArabiyya wa-l-Tashriʿat,” (un Women and undp, 2015). Family law, also termed personal status law, is a state law that regulates matters related to marriage, divorce, alimony, custody (wisaya) and guardianship (wilaya) over children, inheritance, and adoption. The two terms are here used interchangeably. The civic status of women in mena states today can be compared to women’s civic status in most Western liberal states at the time that women got political rights. In a study of 28 European states, Rodríguez-Ruiz and Rubio-Marín note that “[w]ith the main exception of Nordic countries, women gained suffrage rights before qualifying as independent individuals, through the recognition of equal rights with men in the private sphere.” Blanca Rodriguez-Ruiz and Ruth Rubio-Marín, The Struggle for Female Suffrage in Europe: Voting to Become Citizens, vol. 122, International Studies in Sociology and Social Anthropology (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 35. Civic legal autonomy refers here to the ownership of one’s personhood, described as “a very special kind of property, the property that individuals are held to own in their persons.” Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), 5.

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Female Citizenship in Contemporary Kuwait

In Kuwait, as in most states in mena, the principle of male guardianship permeates state laws in ways that create legal gaps at both national and international levels. At the national level the constitution proclaims the principle of equality and human dignity.11 However, in practice other state laws trump constitutional provisions because a Kuwaiti woman is legally capacitated primarily through her male kin. In the 1959 Nationality Law, for instance, Article 2 states that Kuwaiti citizenship is transmitted through a male citizen, depriving a Kuwaiti woman of the opportunity to transfer citizenship to her children if married to a non-citizen. In criminal law and family law, a Kuwaiti woman does not have an autonomous legal personhood because marriage, divorce, custody of children, sexual harassment, domestic violence, rape, and the right to independent abortion are matters conditioned by the consent, mediation, or abrogation of male kin. In general, social security laws premise that a Kuwaiti family is constituted of a Kuwaiti male head who is perceived as the main provider (muʾil).12 Finally, labour and pension laws allow Kuwaiti female employees in the public sector to retire at the age of 45 (males at 55). While retirement is optional, early retirement schemes that push employed women in the public sector out of the labour market when they reach 45 represent a threat to women’s economic citizenship as authorities seek to cater for rising youth unemployment.13 At the international level, Kuwait signed the 1979 un Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (cedaw) in 1994, with reservations pertaining to gender equality in nationality laws (Article 9), and matters related to marriage and divorce (Article 16) on the grounds that it conflicts with provisions related to Islamic law (Shariʿa).14 11

12

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Article 29 states that “[a]ll people are equal in human dignity, and in public rights and duties before the law, without distinction as to race, origin, language or religion.” The Constitution of the State of Kuwait, issued on November 11, 1962, The Secretariat General of the National Assembly, n.d. Badria Al-Awadhi, al-Huquq al-Siyasiyya wa-l-Qanuniyya wa-l-Insaniyya li-l-Marʾa al-­ Kuwaitiyya [Political, Legal and Human Rights for the Kuwaiti Woman] (Kuwait: privately published, 2006), 55–57, 208–210, 27. Security Laws of 1976 and Law 128 of 1992, Social Security Programs throughout the World, accessed January 29, 2016, http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/progdesc/ssptw/2012-2013/ asia/kuwait.pdf. United Nations, “Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women – Kuwait,” October 18, 2011, accessed January 29, 2016, http:// www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/docs/co/CEDAW-C-KWT-CO-3-4.pdf.

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A Legalistic Approach to Female Citizenship

The citizenship approach applied here substantiates de jure legal aspects pertaining to the autonomous personhood of an adult woman, rather than the de facto relational and kinship-based socio-economic conditions that influence her life chances and choices.15 The legalistic emphasis is further supported by a focus on institutionalised forms of communication through Kuwaiti parliamentary documents. This legalistic institutional perspective is a methodological approach chosen for two reasons: first, the 2011 Arab Uprisings demonstrated the continued will of citizens in the mena region to promote and support legislative institutions.16 Although authoritarian rule has re-emerged in new ways, pressure for reforms in Kuwait persists.17 Despite the turmoil, parliament has proved to be a vital public arena for participation in officially sanctioned institutions and procedures where national issues are debated and conflicts addressed.18 Secondly, Kuwaiti parliamentary documents were digitised and made available to a global audience via the Internet in April 2012, a mere 16 months after the Uprisings while the parliament was dissolved. From October 2014, the Kuwaiti parliament has run a live stream of its sessions and issued a 12-page daily newspaper called al-Dustour.19 These steps signal that the ruling regime sees its interests as being strengthened by transparency. They also reflect the changing face of authoritarianism whereby both increased media coverage of parliamentary politics and rule according to constitutional prerogatives are seen as part of the Kuwaiti regime’s governance strategy following the 2011 Uprisings.

15 16 17

18 19

Suad Joseph and Susan Slyomovics (eds), Women and Power in the Middle East (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 7–8. Elisabeth Thompson, Justice Interrupted: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle East (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013). Mary Ann Tétreault, “Bottom-up Democratization in Kuwait,” in Political Change in the Arab Gulf States: Stuck in Transition, ed. Andrzej Kapiszewski, Gwenn Okruhlik, and Mary Ann Tétreault (Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner, 2011), 79–90. Nathan J. Brown, When Victory Is not an Option: Islamist Movements in Arab Politics ­(Ithaca, n.y.: Cornell University Press, 2012), 5. The first digitised issue of al-Dustour (“The Constitution”) dates from July 29, 2013. The newspaper came out twice a month until October 28, 2014, when it began to be issued daily, http://www.kna.kw/clt/run.asp?id=2008#sthash.gJYNbMjJ.dpbs.

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Kuwaiti State and Society

Among the Gulf states, Kuwait has an unparalleled historical record of political participation and a rich heritage of autonomous and semi-autonomous organisations. Bahrain was the first Gulf state with a representative parliament to grant female citizens political rights in 2002, but Kuwait’s parliament remains unique, as it is the only elected representative assembly in the region following the Bahraini regime’s clampdown on protestors in 2011 and Bahraini parliament’s loss of legitimacy in the eyes of its Shiʿi citizens.20 With the end of the British protectorate over Kuwait (1897–1961), Emir Abdallah al-Salem, a member of the Sabbah family that has ruled Kuwait since 1752, set in motion the election of a Constitutional Assembly in December 1961. Deriving its legitimacy from the 1938 pact between merchants and rulers, the Assembly drafted a constitution that was approved by the Emir in 1962. This constitution laid out the principles of governance for the Emirate and defined the hereditary powers of the Sabbah family.21 Elections have been held ever since 1963, with interruptions in 1976 and 1986 when the Emir dissolved parliament, although it was later re-opened in 1992 following the Iraqi invasion (1990–1991). The 65-member National Assembly includes 50 elected MPs and 15 appointed ministers, with Sabbah family members in key positions such as Prime Minister and the Ministers of Defence, the Interior, Information, and Foreign Affairs. The most significant feature of Kuwaiti political participation is its exclusionary traits, which have historic parallels with Athenian democracy (around 400 bc), where the legal stratification of inhabitants ran along gender lines (as only males participated), as well as along divisions that marked the legal status of citizens and non-citizens. The demography of Kuwait is of political importance for two reasons: first, because citizens form a minority of around 35 per cent of the state’s total of 3.3 million inhabitants due to the high percentage 20

21

The other gcc-states have assemblies and councils of a consultative and administrative nature: Oman has an advisory council, Qatar an appointed consultative assembly, the uae a mixed system with an indirectly elected and appointed advisory council, while Saudi Arabia has an appointed advisory council. Rex Brynen et al., Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism & Democratization in the Arab World (Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), 175. Jill Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar ­(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 86; Mary Ann Tétreault, Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 65.

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of a migrant and long-term non-citizen workforce;22 and secondly, because of the presence of a substantial segment of stateless long-term residents known as biduns, who number around 100,000.23 Unsettled territorial boundaries since the 1940s, segregated housing policies from the early 1950s, politically motivated naturalisations in the application of the 1959 Nationality Law, and the politicisation of census figures before and after Kuwait’s liberation from the Iraqi occupation are factors that exacerbate social divisions between citizens and non-citizens. These denizens,24 part of Kuwaiti social fabric but without citizenship certificates, appear repeatedly in proposals related to women that were raised by Kuwaiti MPs in parliament during the period examined here. Consequently, parliamentary documents reflect the bidun issue as a hotly-contested one, closely linked to tribal kinship affiliation, and in particular to marriage ties between Kuwaiti women and non-citizens, as well as the status and rights of children of mixed marriages between Kuwaiti women and non-Kuwaiti men, including citizens of GCCstates and bidun.

A Note on Kuwaiti Parliamentary Documents

Parliamentary documents are sources in which political issues are articulated and addressed explicitly. They reflect the range of recorded and publicly accessible venues through which Kuwaiti MPs express opinions and highlight the four main ways in which requests are addressed: individually, by raising questions (asʾila) in plenary sessions, which are responded to by the responsible Minister or Ministry; collectively, through law proposals (iqtirah bi-qanun) expressions of support (iqtirah bi-raghba) or law proposals (mashruʾ bi-qanun) that are passed to an appropriate parliamentary committee (lajna). If accepted by the committee, the proposal is presented in a plenary session, voted on 22 23

24

Annual Statistical Abstract 2012, p. 47, accessed January 29, 2016, http://www.csb.gov.kw/ Socan_Statistic_EN.aspx?ID=18. Bidun is Arabic shorthand for “bidun jinsiyya,” meaning “without citizenship.” Human Rights Watch operates with the figure of 105,702 Kuwaiti bidun, though the number is probably higher due to the politicisation of census figures. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2014, Kuwait, accessed January 29, 2016, http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/ country-chapters/kuwait. More information on the Kuwaiti bidun can be found in Claire Beaugrand’s chapter in this volume. “Denizens” can be defined as privileged resident aliens: Tomas Hammar, Democracy and the Nation State: Aliens, Denizens and Citizens in a World of International Migration (Aldershot: Avebury, 1990), 12–14.

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in two separate rounds, and then approved by the government, before being issued as a law published in the Official Gazette (al-Jarida al-Rasmiyya). In cases where a law proposal gains a majority in parliament but is opposed by the government, the Emir has the powers to block its passing either by considering it unconstitutional or by dissolving parliament, provided that elections are held within 60 days.25

Gaining Political Rights in 2005

Kuwaiti women gained the right to vote and to be elected to the National Assembly on an equal footing with men on May 16, 2005. The enfranchisement initiative came through pressures from above, first in 1999 by the Emir whose decree was deemed unconstitutional, and once again in 2005 through a new initiative by the Prime Minister.26 The parliamentary session in which women received the vote made two amendments to Article 1 of the Election Law 35 from 1962: the word “male” was deleted,27 and a sentence added that states a woman is obliged to adapt to rules and norms based on the Shariʿa, in order to placate conservative MPs.28 In total 59 votes were cast: 35 were for (21 votes by elected MPs and 14 votes by ministers) and 23 against (all votes by elected MPs), with one abstention, while five MPs were not present.29 If we include the abstention and those not present, elected MPs who opposed women’s enfranchisement numbered 29.30 25 Tétreault, Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait, 60. 26 Tétreault, “Bottom-up Democratization in Kuwait,” 77–79. 27 Law 17 of June 4, 2005 reads “every Kuwaiti […] has the right to vote” (li-kull kuwaiti […] haqq al-intikhab); previously the Election law had stated that “every Kuwaiti male […] has the right to vote” (li-kull kuwaiti min al-thukur […] haqq al-intikhab), Official Gazette, June 5, 2005. 28 The amendment reads “yashtarit li-l-marʾa fi-l-tarshih wa-l-intikhab al-iltizam bi-l-qawaʾid wa-l-ahkam al-muʿtamida fi-l-shariʿa al-islamiyya,” Official Gazette, June, 5 2005. 29 In Kuwait, ministers also vote in parliament, which explains why 59 votes were cast, and not just those of the 50 elected MPs. All the information on the political affiliation and voting patterns of Kuwaiti MPs, as well as the voting results used here, are drawn from Michael Herb’s superb Kuwait Politics Database, accessed January 29, 2016, http://www .kuwaitpolitics.org/. 30 The single abstention was by President of the National Assembly and former Finance Minister Jasem al-Khorafi (3rd circle). The five absent MPs included the Salafi leader Ahmad Baqer (5th circle), Basil al-Rashed (10th circle), Abdullah al-Rumi (4th circle), Ali Khaled al-Saʿid (11th circle), and Walid al-Osaimi (14th circle). They are here counted as against granting women political rights because their opposition was articulated in

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The six pro-women votes that secured the franchise reflect a fairly conservative societal atmosphere that is, by and large, not attuned to granting Kuwaiti women political rights. Nevertheless, the regime had important allies in the small but historically significant women’s movement that had been pressuring for political rights since 1963.31 Other supporters of women’s enfranchisement came from urbanised constituencies inhabited by the economically powerful elites with merchant backgrounds, liberals, and Shiʿi groups, as well as parts of the Muslim Brotherhood’s women’s branch, led by Suʿad al-Jarallah, who were in favour of political rights for women, in contrast to the group’s male leadership.32

Do Women Make a Difference in Parliament?

Do women make a difference when they are elected to legislative institutions? Simply asserting that the presence of women is a good thing for articulating women’s interests in politics is a problematic standpoint. Given the short-term effect of only a decade of enfranchisement, female political representation and the articulation of women’s interests in Kuwait may be assumed to coincide with those of men and thus be treated as unproblematic for politics overall. Researchers on the impact of women in representative bodies have differing views on whether it is women’s presence in parliament, often seen in terms of the number of women present, or whether it is acts – i.e. deeds in support of women’s issues raised, irrespective of women’s actual presence in decision-making bodies – that impact on reforms that strengthen female citizenship. Recent research in Western liberal democracies suggests that acts, not numbers, are critical for such change.33

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32

33

­ ublic prior to the voting session. Before the 2008 elections, there existed 25 electoral p circles, with 1st–5th circles lying closest to Kuwait City’s centre. Haya al-Mughni, Women in Kuwait: The Politics of Gender (London: Saqi, 2001); Mary Ann Tétreault, “Kuwait’s Parliament Considers Women’s Political Rights,” Middle East Report Online (2004), www.merip.org/mero/mero090204. Accessed January 29, 2016. Suʿad al-Jarallah, interview with author, March 16, 2015. On Islamist politics and its impact on women in Kuwait after 1992, see Tétreault, Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait, 158–164; Haya al-Mughni, “The Rise of Islamic Feminism in Kuwait,” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée (December 2010): 167–182. Joni Lovenduski and Marila Guadagnini, “Political Representation,” in The Politics of State Feminism: Innovation in Comparative Research, ed. Dorothy E. McBride, et al. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 164–166.

444

Maktabi

My investigation of the Kuwaiti parliamentary records supports both standpoints. Acts, understood here as law proposals that targeted women’s issues, increased dramatically with the presence of women in parliament, i.e. their number, as reflected most clearly in Table 16.3, below, which shows that the number of law proposals dealt with at the “Woman and Family Affairs Committee” (wfc) increased dramatically with the entry of women into parliament. For instance, between 22 January 2007 and 27 June 2011 the wfc addressed 47 cases, of which 38 – i.e. more than eighty per cent – were raised during the two years the female MPs were the wfc’s main members.34 This observation reflects the impact of women’s political participation through the gendering of political issues, and theoretically feeds into a wider discussion on whether and how women’s presence in parliament, i.e. descriptive aspects of representation, enhances the focus on women’s issues, i.e. substantive aspects of representation.35 In Kuwait, women’s presence in parliament between 2009 and 2011 went hand in hand with acts pertaining to women, i.e. the amount of law proposals that addressed women’s issues. Male MPs were particularly diligent in raising law proposals that addressed women’s issues as is pointed out further below. Feminist theoreticians remind us that the organisation and mobilisation of women entails contradictions, such as the reproduction of domination, even though women “work for, and at times succeed in, improving women’s status and conditions.”36 Moreover, class interests in Kuwait are embedded in struggles for positions in the labour market, where elite women restrain the upward mobility of women from the middle class, as well as educated males of rural and Bedouin background.37 Social stratification aside, the democratising impact of Kuwaiti women’s enfranchisement relates most significantly to the articulation of demands that target women’s issues specifically, such as reproductive rights, abortion, domestic abuse, rape, sexual assault in the public sphere, conferring citizenship 34

35 36

37

During this period, MPs presented a total of 25 expressions of support (iqtirah bi-righba), of which 20 were raised while the four women MPs were present in parliament, and 22 law proposals (iqtirah bi-qanun), of which 15 were raised while the four women MPs were present. Lovenduski and Guadagnini, “Political Representation,” 167–168. Suad Joseph, “The Reproduction of Political Process among Women Activists in Lebanon: ‘Shopkeepers’ and Feminists,” in Organizing Women: Formal and Informal Women’s Groups in the Middle East, ed. Dawn Chatty and Annika Rabo (Oxford: Berg, 1997), 57. Mary Ann Tétreault, “Kuwait: Sex, Violence, and the Politics of Economic Restructuring,” in Women and Globalization in the Arab Middle East: Gender, Economy & Society, ed. Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Marsha Pripstein Posusney (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003), 222–224.

Female Citizenship and the Franchise in Kuwait after 2005

445

to children when married to a non-national, job opportunities, social security and maternity leave schemes, and public childcare facilities.38 I read Kuwaiti parliamentary documents by applying McBride and Mazur’s distinction between “policy debates” that cover long-term economic and social issues, and “hot issues” that cover contested questions.39 This broad perspective is combined by recognising criteria of a legalistic nature for identifying and categorising women-specific issues pointed out by Htun and Weldon.40 In Kuwait, the main policy areas following women’s enfranchisement relate to access to housing, girls’ and women’s education and health, working conditions for mothers employed in the labour market, and those who work at home. Contested issues relate to reforms in nationality law, the regulation of civil and social rights of Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis, and the rights of children born of such mixed marriages. As will be seen below, the entry of Kuwaiti women into the legislature influenced the propensity of law proposals regarding these issues.

Female Parliamentarians in Kuwait 2009–2011: Who were They?

All four first-time female Kuwaiti MPs hold PhDs from universities in the United States, in fields such as education, political science, and economics.41 38

39

40

41

These are examples of women’s issues that are shared by feminist researchers who, nevertheless, differ on what constitutes an issue related to women. Osborne differentiates, for instance, between traditionalist, specific, and feminist women’s issues: Tracy L. Osborn, How Women Represent Women : Political Parties, Gender and Representation in the State Legislatures (Oxford University Press, 2012), 28–31. Another example into what may constitute women’s issues is provided by Htun, who argues that “women’s rights” or “feminist policies” should not be treated as single-issue areas. Instead, she stresses the distinctiveness of how issues related to gender are processed politically, how groups shape policy debates, and which ideas pertaining to change are at stake: Mala Htun, Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce and the Family under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 2, 4. Amy Mazur and Dorothy McBride, “The State Feminism Project,” in The Politics of State Feminism: Innovation in Comparative Research, ed. Amy G. Mazur and Joni Lovenduski (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 20–22. Mala Htun and S. Laurel Weldon, “State Power, Religion, and Women’s Rights: A Comparative Analysis of Family Law,” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 18 (2011): 151–153. The authors point out criteria across 71 countries that include minimum marriage age, consent in marriage, spousal rights and duties, guardianship, name, marital property regime, right to work, divorce, custody and property after divorce, adultery and inheritance. Al-Moubarak (b. 1947) has been a professor of political science at Kuwait University (ku) since 1982. She earned her PhD in international relations at the University of Denver, and

446

Maktabi

All four also belong to the urban (hadar), population where they ran as candidates in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd electoral circles. Al-Jassar and al-Awadhi have a Sunni background, while al-Moubarak and Dashti belong to Kuwait’s Shiʿi community. The latter two have personal experience of mixed-marriages between Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis, bringing significant life experience that was articulated into law proposals aimed at strengthening the civil rights of children born of such marriages: al-Moubarak is married to a Bahraini and has four children, all of whom are non-Kuwaitis because citizenship laws in Kuwait confer citizenship through the father and not through the mother, while Dashti is the daughter of a Lebanese mother and a Kuwaiti father, hence she received Kuwaiti citizenship.

Questions Presented by Female MPs during the 13th Parliamentary Session

The four female MPs presented 241 questions during the two-year period they served.42 A review of all these questions indicates that women-specific issues were hardly articulated at all. Only five questions raised related to “women” or “girls” as category. These covered the employment of a female lawyer to a public position;43 statistics on employed and unemployed women;44 information on female domestic workers;45 a conflict at a girls’ school involving the police;46 and the distribution of schools according to gender.47 One explanation for the vague gendered perspective portrayed through individual questions is probably that the female MPs sought to represent themselves as politicians who addressed all sorts of questions pertaining to Kuwaiti

42 43 44 45 46 47

was the first Kuwaiti woman appointed as a Minister, in 2005. She has held the ministerial posts of Planning (2005), Communication (2006), and Health (2007). Al-Awadhi earned her PhD in philosophy from the University of Texas and has been professor of philosophy at ku. Dashti (b. 1964) holds a PhD in Population Economics from Johns Hopkins University. She was Minister of Planning and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs (2012–2014). Al-Jassar has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh and is a professor in the Department of Education at ku. The number of questions raised by each mp individually is rendered in brackets: Rola Dashti (83), Aseel al-Awadhi (61), Maʾsouma al-Moubarak (46), and Salwa al-Jassar (24). Question posed by Rola Dashti on October 4, 2009. Question posed by Rola Dashti on June 17, 2010. Question posed by Asil al-Awadhi on November 3, 2009. Question posed by Maʾsouma al-Moubarak on December 5, 2010. Question posed by Maʾsouma al-Moubarak on July 7, 2011.

Female Citizenship and the Franchise in Kuwait after 2005

447

society, and not only those related to women. At a collective level, female MPs gathered momentum on women-specific issues most clearly in law proposals they raised together, and with male MPs.

Law Proposals Raised by Female MPs during the 13th Parliamentary Session

How did these proposals seek to strengthen Kuwaiti women’s legal capacity in state laws? The four female MPs made their mark as legislators in three ways: by presenting law proposals individually; by raising law proposals together and with other male MPs; and by taking over the leadership of the Woman and Family Affairs Committee (Lajnat Shuʾun al-Marʾa wa-l-Usra, hereafter wfc). Proposals on Women’s Issues Raised Individually by Female MPs Proposals raised to all parliamentary committees by the female MPs show a distinctly articulated focus on strengthening the autonomy of Kuwaiti women by bolstering civil and economic rights independently of male kin. This is most clearly reflected in demands that targeted Kuwaiti women married to non-­ Kuwaitis: five out of the twelve proposals raised were related to this category of Kuwaiti women, as indicated in Table 16.1.48 mp al-Moubarak presented the most vocal demands by forwarding four proposals to different committees demanding: residence for non-Kuwaiti husbands and children of Kuwaiti women; administrative registration measures that specify the birth of children to Kuwaiti mothers in public documents; free public education for the children of Kuwaiti mothers and non-Kuwaiti fathers;49 and the treatment of children of mixed marriages as Kuwaiti until they reach 18 years, after which they are granted Kuwaiti citizenship. In the fifth law proposal, entitled “On the rights of the child,” mp Dashti addressed 48 49

The initials of the four female MPs’ names will be used hereafter when referring to law proposals raised by them. Proposal raised on June 24, 2011 by mm and rd who suggested that Article 4 of the 1987 law on public education be amended so that “the education of Kuwaitis and the children of Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis in public schools [be given] for free.” In an explanatory note they point out that “there are many children of Kuwaiti mothers who do not enjoy Kuwaiti citizenship because their father is a non-Kuwaiti, depriving them of free education in public schools, [and] obliging them to apply to private schools, a step that is enormously costly for the non-Kuwaiti head of the family (rabb al-usra) and the Kuwaiti woman.”

Education, Culture and Guidance Committee

Women and Family Committee

The ­Legislation and Law Committee

16.8.2010: Grant teachers the opportunity to develop their knowledge

12.5.2010: Amend law on Social Security of 1976 by specifying a woman whose husband is dead, enabling her to get a salary when reaching 40 as of 31.12.2004, and not 31.12.2009.

(*) 6.12.2010: Law proposal 16.7.2009: Amend Art. 15 of Law 11 of 1962 granting On the right of the child a woman the right to issue a ­(bi-shaʾn huquq al-tifl). passport without getting the permission of her male kin or husband.

8.7.2009: Establish a permanent parliamentary Committee for Women and Family Affairs --(*) 24.5.2011: Amend Art. 4 of Law on public education of 1987 ­enabling children of Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis to access public education. (*) 10.2.2011: Permit the female citizen married to a man whose ­citizenship is unidentified to ­register her children at school through a birth notification.

Rola Dashti (rd)

Asil Awadhi (aa)

Maʾsouma al-Moubarak (mm)

Table 16.1 Proposals on women’s issues by the female MPs in all parliamentary committees May 2009–December 2011a

1.4.2010: Female security guards at girls’ schools

Salwa al-Jassar (sj)

448 Maktabi

(*) 15.4.2010: Add an article to the 1959 Citizenship Law: “those born of a Kuwaiti mother and a non-Kuwaiti father, and whose regular abode is Kuwait, be treated as Kuwaiti until he reaches of age, and then obtains Kuwaiti citizenship.”

(*) 3.2.2010: Grant permanent residence to children of a Kuwaiti woman who is married to a non-Kuwaiti or with a man whose citizenship is not identified and whose marriage has lasted for five years or more.

22.4.2010: Establish ­facilities for women in all sports associations

7.4.2010: Establish specialised sections for women’s health and reproductive needs in all national hospitals and health centres.

a This table does not differentiate between expressions of support and law proposals. Proposals that address Kuwaiti mothers married to non-Kuwaitis are marked with (*).

Interior and ­Defence committee

Youth and sports Committee

Health, Social and Labour Committee

Committee addressing the situation of those whose citizenship is not identified

Female Citizenship and the Franchise in Kuwait after 2005

449

450

Maktabi

the issue of children born of Kuwaiti mothers, in Article 1: “this law applies to Kuwaitis and the children of a Kuwaiti mother married to a non-Kuwaiti.”50 Furthermore, mp al-Awadhi sought to strengthen the legal capacity of women in a proposal demanding that Kuwaiti women be allowed to issue passports without the permission of male kin.51 Two reforms were eventually achieved: one strengthened Kuwaiti women’s legal capacity in mediating welfare to their children following a decision by the Ministry of Education to allow the children of Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis to receive a state education; the other enabled Kuwaiti women to get a passport following an amendment to the passport regulations.52 The latter reform was made after a woman raised a case against her ex-husband that was addressed by the Constitutional Court (al-Mahkama al-Dusturiyya), which overruled a 1994 decision that prohibited women to be given passports without the permission of male kin.53 Importantly, these reforms were made by the administration and through the judiciary, illustrating that pressure through parliament has not been sufficient for change to occur in gendered state laws in Kuwait. Proposals on Women’s Issues Raised by Female MPs Together and with Male MPs Nearly half of all law proposals relating to women’s issues – five out of eleven – raised by the female MPs together or with male MPs targeted the legal capacity of Kuwaiti mothers married to non-Kuwaitis: one proposal requested that a Kuwaiti mother’s citizenship be stated on their children’s birth certificates;54 two proposals addressed housing issues pertaining to Kuwaiti women and

2

50

51 52 53 54

Another version of the Law on the Child was eventually presented by Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, Hind al-Subeih, on December 8, 2014, and unanimously passed in parliament on March 11, 2015. On the same day, a joint law proposal was raised by four other MPs: mm, rd, Faisal Saʿoud al-Dwaisan, and Saleh Mohammad al-Milla; see Table 16.2. Author’s interview with Dr al-Moubarak, April 22, 2012. For the text of the ruling in Arabic, see al-Anbaʾ, October 21, 2009. Proposal raised on June 17, 2009 by rd, mm, Adnan Abdel Samad, Mubarak al-Wuʾlan, and Mohammad al-Heweila, who point out that “this is important information” as, arguably, registration of the Kuwaiti mother’s citizenship makes the maternal blood-ties of the child more visible.

Female Citizenship and the Franchise in Kuwait after 2005

451

Table 16.2 Female MPs collaborating in addressing women’s issuesa

Two female MPs or more in collaboration The Legislation and Law Committee

One or more female MPs in ­collaboration with male MPs (*) 17.6.2009: Amend Art. 2 of Law 36 of 1969 so that the name and citizenship of both mother and father be added to birth and death certificates. --16.7.2009: Amend Art. 15 of Law 11 of 1962 granting a woman the right to issue a passport without needing the permission of her male kin or husband. ---4.11.2009: Civil and Social Rights of the Child. ---10.3.2010: Establish Citizen Fund to help the middle class, as well as other grants and loans. --(*) 14.4.2010: Amend Law 47 of 1993 on Housing, addresses specifically the problems of a Kuwaiti woman married to a non-Kuwaiti. --5.5.2010: Establish kindergartens in the public sector

Women and (*) 28.4.2010: All four: ­Family Committee Establish a Women’s Housing Fund (Sunduq al-Marʾa lil-Iskan) Education, 28.10.2010: Move the premises of a Qurʾan school and establish a ­Culture and girls’ secondary school ­Guidance Committee

452

Maktabi

Table 16.2 Female MPs collaborating in addressing women’s issuesa (cont.)

Two female MPs or more in collaboration Health, Social and Labour Committee

Monetary and Financial Committee

(*) 24.11.2010: Amend Law 12 of 1999 that requires foreigners to pay for health insurance, by adding another article which exempts a Kuwaiti mother and her children from paying health fees. ---29.11.2010: Establish kindergartens in the public sector for children up to four years of age where 25 women or more are employed.

One or more female MPs in ­collaboration with male MPs

(*) 21.1.2010: Law proposal to specify health insurance by adding Art. 2 suggesting that “the health security system applies to all citizens, and can be applied to the children of a Kuwaiti [woman] married to a non-Kuwaiti, and to the non-Kuwaiti [woman] married to a Kuwaiti, by a decision from the administration.”

a Proposals that address Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis are marked with (*) in Table 16.2.

mothers;55 and the remaining two proposals demanded that a Kuwaiti m ­ other’s family get free access to public healthcare schemes.56 55

56

The first proposal was raised on April 14, 2010 by aa, mm, sj, and Ali Fahd al-Rashed. The second proposal was raised on April 28, 2010 by the four female MPs, and is discussed further below. The first was raised by mm and rd on January 21, 2010. The second proposal was raised on November 24, 2010 by rd, sj, mm, Naji Abdallah al-Abdelhadi, and Adnan Ibrahim al-Mutawwaʾ.

Female Citizenship and the Franchise in Kuwait after 2005

453

Other proposals were more general, and addressed Kuwaiti women’s employment opportunities. In two proposals lawmakers suggested the establishment of kindergartens in workplaces where more than 25 women are employed;57 in two others they addressed the civil rights of the child58 and a Kuwaiti woman’s right to receive a passport.59 The remaining proposal suggested the establishment of a Citizen Fund (Sunduq al-Muwatin) to ease the financial burden on families,60 a Women’s Housing Fund (Sunduq al-Marʾa al-Iskani),61 and a girls’ school.62 Seen in terms of labour market accommodation, the proposal regarding the establishment of kindergartens in the public sector is particularly important. In their law proposal raised on November 29, 2010, Dashti and al-Moubarak argued that the establishment of public childcare institutions “eases the ­[female] employee’s opportunity to attend to her family life, and the child’s need for her, enabling [the working mother] to attend to her duties in an overall manner.” The two female MPs targeted the Health, Social, and Labour Committee, covering public sectors that employ almost 90 per cent of Kuwaiti women, most of whom work as teachers, administrators, and health workers.63 While the kindergarten proposal did not get through parliament, a proposal raised by Islamist MPs demanding a monthly grant for unemployed mothers – discussed in the next section – was adopted for some categories of women. These two claims reflect a significant political divide on gender relations between female MPs and male MPs with conservative views. While the women were eager to support working mothers, Islamist MPs saw their popularity increase among traditionally-oriented families and tribal groups through proposals regarding monthly allowances to unemployed women.

57 58

59

60 61 62 63

The first was raised by rd, mm, and Abdel-Rahman Fahd al-ʿAnjari of the Democratic Forum on May 5, 2010. The second was raised by rd and mm on November 29, 2010. aa with Fahd Abdel-Rahman al-ʿAnjari, Musallam al-Barrak, and Walid al-Tabtabaʾi. The latter two have Salafi orientations and both voted against granting women the franchise in 2005. Proposal raised by mm, rd, Mohammad Saleh al-Mulla, and Faisal Saʿoud al-Dwaisan on July 16, 2009. The text is identical to the law proposal put forward by aa on the same day (see Table 16.1). rd, mm, Shuʾayb Shabab al-Muweisri, Faisal Saʿoud al-Duwaisan, and Naji Abdallah Abdelhadi. Law proposal by all four female MPs, raised on April 28, 2010. Proposal raised by rd, aa, Ahmad al-Saʿdoun, Saleh Mohammad al-Mulla, and Naji ­Abdallah Abdelhadi on October 28, 2010. Kuwait Annual Statistical Abstract 2010, p. 108.

454

Maktabi



The Woman and Family Affairs Committee under Female Leadership, 2009–2011 In October 2005, a few months after Kuwaiti women were enfranchised, the Woman’s Committee (Lajnat al-Marʾa) was established in parliament. Two years later, “family” was added and the wc became the wfc. mp Saleh Ahmad ʿAshour (b. 1953), a vocal supporter of women’s rights and a prominent Shiʿi representative of the Justice and Peace Alliance (Tajammuʿ al-ʿAdala wal-Salam), was the leader of the wfc between 2006 and 2009. With the entry of the four female MPs in 2009, they became the committee’s main members, while ʿAshour served as secretary. In a proposal by mp Maʾsouma al-Moubarak raised on July 8, 2009, the wfc was transformed into a permanent parliamentary committee. Tables  16.1 and 16.2, above, show that female MPs raised only three proposals through the wfc: one for establishing a Housing Fund for women (all four), another regarding amendments to the social security of widows (Dashti on May 12, 2010), and a third on school registration of Kuwaiti women married to a bidun (al-Moubarak on February 10, 2011). Interestingly, other MPs – ­particularly Islamist MPs with Salafi orientations and/or a tribal background – used the wfc as a central arena for raising women’s issues, as indicated in Table 16.3. Table  16.3 shows that housing issues were those most frequently raised through the wfc over the eight-year period. These demands show the economic centrality of access to public housing and loans as part of the welfare services offered to Kuwaiti citizens. How and why housing and women’s issues intersect is a topic that reflects the relationship between welfare provision in an oil-rentier state, citizenship as legal status, and ideological views pertaining to Kuwaiti women’s position in the family and in society.

Housing as Welfare in Kuwait

The Kuwaiti state’s housing security scheme is stipulated in Law 47 of 1993 and administered by The Public Authority for Housing Welfare (al-Muʾassasa al-ʿAmma li-l-Riʾaya al-Sakaniyya, pahw). This scheme is part of the state’s welfare program to support the family as the core institution in society, and to encourage Kuwaitis to marry and establish homes.64 64

Sharifa Alshalfan, “The Right to Housing in Kuwait: An Urban Injustice in a Socially Just System,” (2013), http://www.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/programmes/kuwait/documents/The-right -to-housing-in-Kuwait.pdf. Accessed January 29, 2016.

455

Female Citizenship and the Franchise in Kuwait after 2005 Table 16.3 Suggestions and law proposals presented to the Woman and Family Committee (wfc) according to type of issue defined as related to Kuwaiti women 2006–2013a

Parliamentary session

11th 12th 13th 14th Total 12.7.2006– 1.6.2008– 31.5.2009– 6.8.2013– 18.3.2008 17.3.2009 5.12.2011 22.3.2015b

Housing issues Monthly grant to nonworking women Maternity leave / reduction of working hours to mothers / increase in children’s monthly allowance Social assistance free access to health and education to husbands and children of K-women married to non-K Law on women’s civil and social rights Woman’s capacity to act as kafil and guarantee residence for her husband and children Establishment of research centre for women, conferences, awareness programs Financial insurance for working women / widowsc Consultancy and service centre on marital issuesd Divorced women’s capacity to get children’s allowance if children in her custody (hadana)

12 4

5

11 6

23 15

5

2

6

13

2

2

6

10

1

5

1

7

5

5

2

5

2

2

3

2 1

2 1

456

Maktabi

Table 16.3 Suggestions and law proposals presented to the Woman and Family Committee (wfc) according to type of issue defined as related to Kuwaiti women 2006–2013a (cont.)

Parliamentary session

Restriction of women’s working conditionse Law on the childf Total

11th 12th 13th 14th Total 12.7.2006– 1.6.2008– 31.5.2009– 6.8.2013– 18.3.2008 17.3.2009 5.12.2011 22.3.2015b 1 25

1 17

40

1 3

1

a MPs presented law proposals that sometimes covered several issues. For instance, Dr Faisal al-Muslim presented an expression of support on June 15, 2009 for the idea that Kuwaiti women married to a non-Kuwaiti be able to be a guarantor (kafil) for her husband and children. In the same proposal he suggested that working mothers be given a raise in children’s allowance (ʿalawat awlad); this proposal is categorised as relating to two issues. I have therefore categorised the number of issues raised, and not number of proposals. This methodological choice explains why the total number of proposals presented by MPs, and the number of issues categorised here are not identical. b The date March 22, 2015 refers to the date of writing, and not the end date of the 14th parliamentary session. The sparse amount of documentation available for 2012 reflects a turbulent period in which parliament was dissolved and elections held in June and December 2012. c Mikhlid Raashid al-ʿAzimi suggested on February 17, 2010 that working mothers who become widows be exempted from work and receive a full salary until their children come of age. d Two separate expressions of support, one on March 11, 2014 by Mohammad Hadi al-Heweila (tribalist Ajman, 5th circle) and the other on March 11, 2015 by Abdelrahman Saleh al-Jiran (Salafi, 2nd circle). e Three law proposals were presented, but these were dealt with as one by the wfc, as rendered in the Committee’s report (taqrir al-lajna) dated February 4, 2007. f Law proposal raised on June 4, 2014 by four Shiʿi MPs (Saleh Ashour, Abdelrahman al-Tameemi, Khalil Ibl, and Khalil al-Saleh), and one Sunni mp (Jamal Hussein al-ʿUmar, 3rd circle).

In principle, the law grants Kuwaiti couples, upon marriage, a house, apartment, or plot of land, along with an interest-free loan from the Credit Bank (Bank al-Taʾmin).65 In practice, however, there are long waiting lists for acquiring public houses. Approximately 110,000 Kuwaiti couples are on lists, the waiting period is between 15 and 20 years, and the yearly distribution rate is 65

In March 2015, 1 Kuwaiti Dinar corresponded to 3.3 usd, 3.2 Euro, 2.24 gbp, or 27.6 Norwegian Kroner.

Female Citizenship and the Franchise in Kuwait after 2005

457

a­ pproximately 12,000 houses or plots of land (qasima). As an administrative measure to reduce the waiting period, eligible Kuwaitis – i.e. married couples – receive a monthly payment of 150 kd called badal al-ijar (literally “compensation for rent”), and 70,000 kd if they choose the land and loan scheme (­ al-ard wa-l-qard) instead of waiting. Most Kuwaitis rely heavily on these rent-free loans, credit grants, and publicly funded housing, which constitute a significant part of monthly expenditure and life savings.66 The Housing Law requires that a loan be registered in the names of both the husband and the wife. However, gender enters the housing equation because another administrative measure regards the registration of the head of the household, which is normally a male, as the main provider (al-muʾil), resulting in the de jure and de facto empowerment of men, be they husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, or uncles in the home, and consequently, in many cases, in housing loans too.67 Between 2009 and 2011, Islamist MPs and MPs with liberal views demanded amendments in the 1993 Housing Law. Both groups, from opposite ends of the political spectrum, suggested reforms that challenged administrative ­measures, societal norms, and state laws that explicitly or implicitly take as their point of departure a male as the main provider (muʾil) and head of the household (rabb al-usra). However, the two groups differed in their style of argumentation. For instance, the four female MPs argued for the establishment of a separate Woman’s Housing Fund and argued specifically for measures to safeguard female autonomy in state laws. They suggested amendments regarding the size of loans, grants, and conditions pertaining to Kuwaiti women because the Housing Law does not address a range of problems related to divorced Kuwaiti mothers, widowers, Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis, and Kuwaiti women over the age of 40 who have lost both her parents. […] In the case of divorced and widowed women, her husband may have benefitted 66

67

Interview with head of the Insurance Bank, Salah al-Midf, in al-Qabas, March 15, 2015. During the waiting period each Kuwaiti head of household – i.e. the husband – receives 150 kd. See “Mashakil al-Iskan”, al-Anbaʾ, March 8, 2015. Kuwaitis who do eventually receive public plots of land are announced in the newspapers; see, for instance, the names of 396 citizens who received a 400m2 plot of land in an area called Tusat al-Wifra in alAnbaʾ, March 7, 2015. Author’s interview with lawyers Nivine Maʿrifi and Laila al-Rashed, who deal with personal status cases in court where housing issues are part and parcel of custody cases over children, and right of abode in the marital home, March 16, 2015.

458

Maktabi

from the Housing Scheme (al-Riʾaya al-Sakaniyya) or from the Credit Bank loan, and used it to his own advantage, or by means of inheritance.68 The latter argument reflects a social practice and a trend among young males in recent years where a husband signs private bank loans in his own name, giving him the right to have ownership of the house through the house certificate (wathiqat al-tamalluk), although the house is technically registered in the names of both spouses, as required by law. Female lawyers who raise such cases in court on behalf of women point out the husbands’ misuse of prerogatives in ways that impoverish divorced women and their female kin.69 The housing proposal raised by female MPs reflects that the legal position of women in the 1993 Housing Law did not conform to the ideal of life-long marriage, or to traditional and conservative notions of males as breadwinners and females as homemakers. Among the reasons for the female MPs’ law proposal are Kuwaiti women’s growing participation in the labour market and corresponding strengthened economic status, rising divorce rates in society, and the incapability of males – for various health or employment-related reasons – to be the main financial providers for a household.70 Female MPs substantiated women’s economic interests and legal status independently of male kin. So did Islamist MPs, although their points of reference and arguments differed, as highlighted in the following section.

Parliamentary Acts by Male MPs: Support for Kuwaiti Women Married to Non-Kuwaitis

The most interesting feature regarding the wfc during the period in which the four female MPs were its main members was the interest shown by male Islamist MPs, here seen as legislators with Salafi leanings, Muslim Brotherhood (Hadas) affiliations, and/or tribal backgrounds, many of whom had voted against female suffrage in 2005. After women got the franchise, however, they raised numerous proposals demanding reforms pertaining to women’s issues, and in particular reforms that addressed the situation of Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis, including bidun.71 68 69 70 71

Law proposal raised by the four female MPs to the wfc on April 28, 2010, p. 5. Author’s interview with Dr Badria al-Awadhi, professor of law, March 15, 2015, and ­author’s interview with lawyer Nour Bin Haidar, March 17, 2015. Author’s interview with Dr Maʾsouma al-Moubarak, April 22, 2012. Rania Maktabi, “Reluctant Feminists: Islamist MPs in Kuwaiti Parliamentary Documents after 2005” (paper presented at the annual conference of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, London, June 24 – 26, 2015).

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Table 16.3, above, indicates that Islamist MPs reformulated demands pertaining to poverty alleviation and social assistance by focusing on women as mothers, widows, and caretakers. In law proposals raised through the wfc, Islamist MPs emphasised gender relations in ways where Kuwaiti women, particularly those married to non-Kuwaitis and stateless bidun, were seen as capacitated citizens. Kuwaiti women, many Islamist MPs argued, should be able to act as legal guardians (kafil) for their husbands and children, be brokers of material welfare services such as free education and health services, and have access to financial commodities such as public housing schemes and jobs in the public sector. For instance, the issue of Kuwaiti women married to nonKuwaitis figured explicitly in six of eleven proposals raised by MPs between 2009 and 2011, i.e. in nearly half of all issues and suggestions related to housing. This segment is specified explicitly in the reformed Housing Law 2 of 2011: two of the five categories identified were Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis. The legislative change affects an estimated 68,000 women and their families,72 and, in total, targets at least 150,000 people who – given that the overall size of the electorate in Kuwait is only around 400,000 – is a substantial percentage of the population.73 Numbers aside, a qualitative assessment of Islamist MPs’ claims for supporting Kuwaiti women’s social and economic rights is directly related to kinship ties between Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis, which, to a large degree, intersect with class and tribal affiliation. Al-Nakib indicates how the Kuwaiti state’s housing policy since the 1950s created dwellings based on socioeconomic background. As a result, there was segregation between well-off inhabitants of merchant and urbanised backgrounds, who lived in central areas surrounding Kuwait City, and the less affluent inhabitants of peripheral areas, outside the city centre.74 In their proposals, Islamist MPs raised the case of Kuwaiti women married to, or having family ties with, non-Kuwaitis and bidun, of which a large ­proportion live in impoverished urban areas, or on the outskirts of Kuwait City. 72

73

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The reformed law affects an estimated 27,500 divorcees, 21,200 widows, 11,000 women married to non-citizens, and 8,600 unmarried women over the age of 41; The World Bank, “Opening Doors: Gender Equality and Development in the Middle East and North ­Africa,” in Mena Development Report (Washington: United States: World Bank Publications, 2013), 71. The figure of 150,000 is my suggestion of the minimum number of women affected. I rounded up the figure 68,000 to 70,000, and then doubled and rounded it up to 150,000, estimating that each Kuwaiti woman has one person under her care. Farah Al-Nakib, “Revisiting Hadar and Badu in Kuwait: Citizenship, Housing, and the Construction of a Dichotomy,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (2014): 5–30.

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In other words, the socio-economic basis of tribal affiliations and housing patterns in Kuwait is of importance here because it reflects the concerns of MPs who represent marginalised sections of the Kuwaiti population. From another perspective, Islamist MPs perceived the wfc as being a significant political arena for addressing issues pertaining to their ideological views of women’s role as care providers for the family. This view was most clearly manifested in their demands that homeworkers, i.e. those outside the labour market, be given a monthly grant (mukafaʾa shahriyya). This proposal was raised repeatedly after 2006,75 and was eventually settled by a decision issued by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs that granted women over 55 years old a monthly grant of 550 kd.76 The policy regarding monthly grants for unemployed women was strongly opposed by MPs with liberal views, including the female MPs, who saw it as a “pull-factor” that discouraged female citizens from seeking work outside the home.77 The Ministerial decision demanding that women be 55 years old can be read as a way of placating cases related to poverty alleviation among older women, including those forced to retire at the age of 45, and avoiding the more politicised side-effects of a grant supporting non-working younger women. In short, parliamentary documents provide evidence that Islamist MPs rode two horses simultaneously: with one they pressured for the economic rights of women who were not employed in the labour market, and with the other they championed wider social and economic rights for Kuwaiti women ­married to 75 Salafi mp Mohammad Hayef al-Mutairi first raised a law proposal suggesting a monthly grant of 250 kd for unemployed women on September 8, 2009, and another proposal on September 17, 2010 demanding the sum of 200 kd. Other Salafis, such as Mikhlid Rashid al-ʿAzimi and Faisal al-Muslim, also raised similar law proposals, on June 21, 2009 and July 6, 2009, respectively. 76 Author interview with mp Saleh ʿAshour, leader of the wfc, March 18, 2015. 77 Although this policy can be seen as “Islamist,” similar policies that aim at safeguarding a financial basis for homeworkers are well-established tax-based “familial policies” in Western welfare states. Conservative Christian democrats in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, for instance, tend to support policies that safeguard the interests of women as homemakers and regard husbands as the primary financial guardians of the family’s financial welfare through employment in the labour market. See Walter Korpi, Gender, Class and Patterns of Inequalities in Different Types of Welfare States, no. 224, Working Paper Series (Walferdange: lis, 2000); Anne Revillard, “Work/Family Policy: From State Familialism to State Feminism?” in Gender Mainstreaming and Family Policy in Europe: Perspectives, Researches and Debates, ed. Isabella Crespi (Macerata: Eduzioni universita macerata, 2007), 137–140.

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non-Kuwaitis. Their claims in the latter by far outnumbered the former, indicating that socio-economic concerns were pivotal, and in particular those concerning Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis, including bidun, and their families.

Enter the Arab Uprisings: Law 2 of January 2011

Proposals for an expanded female citizenship by liberal and Islamist MPs in 2009 and 2010 gained unprecedented political momentum with the 2011 uprisings. By March 2011, the government had issued decrees and laws in response to some of the proposals raised by MPs that had been pending in parliament for over twenty years. Law 2, issued on January 24, 2011, was one such fundamental reform. It amended the 1993 Housing Law by including many categories of Kuwaiti women who had previously been incapable of accessing public housing, such as: Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis who had been naturalised and whose housing applications had been accepted in the year 1989; a Kuwaiti woman married to and having children with a non-Kuwaiti; a Kuwaiti woman married to a non-Kuwaiti who was residing in Kuwait without children, provided that the couple have been married for more than five years; divorced Kuwaiti women; and, finally, single Kuwaiti women over 40 years of age.78 This reform strengthened Kuwaiti women’s autonomy significantly, and should, I argue, be qualitatively differentiated from the populist financial grants handed out by rulers in the Gulf as immediate saturating responses when the first waves of the Arab Uprisings hit the Gulf states.79 Importantly, Law 2 reveals the uniqueness of parliamentary politics in Kuwait compared to other GCC-states because it shows that housing reform can be seen as the government’s response to long-term demands raised by MPs, social actors such as women’s movements, and charities such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Jamʿiyyat al-Islah.80 78 79

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Official Gazette, January 30, 2011. The Kuwaiti government issued several one-off financial handouts in 2011, of which Law 3 of 2011 granted the largest sum – a 1000 kd Emiri grant (al-makrama al-amiriyya) to each Kuwaiti (li-kull fard kuwaiti); Official Gazette, February 20, 2011). Author’s interview with Suʿad al-Jarallah, leader of the Women’s Committee at the Jamʿiyyat al-Islah who participated in forming a Law on women’s civil and social rights through the wfc between 2007–2009, March 16, 2015.

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The Impact of the 2011 Uprisings on Female Citizenship in mena: Kuwait as a Case-Study

Analytical approaches towards discerning dimensions pertaining to women’s civic disenfranchisement in mena after 2011 can be grouped into five main aspects: a) the impact of the transnationalisation of human rights following the 1995 Beijing un summit on women;81 b) the ensuing judicialisation of women’s civic and civil rights at the domestic level, which have been expanded through court decisions and constitutional reframing alongside parliamentary deliberations;82 c) the politicisation of body politics as a response to domestic abuse and violence against women in the public sphere;83 d) the mobilisation of girls and women in articulating their interests and formulating claims through social media;84 and e) the triple governance agendas among rulers in the region – particularly in the Levantine and Gulf states – of supporting gender equality, sustaining neoliberal economic policies, and bolstering support for doctrinal values and views on gender roles as reflected in religious tenets and texts.85 81

Ann Elizabeth Mayer, “Internationalizing the Conversation on Women’s Rights: Arab Countries Face the Cedaw Committee,” ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Barbara Freyer Stowasser (2004); Lynn Welchman, ed. Women’s Rights and Islamic Family Law: Perspectives on Reform (London: Zed Books, 2004); Valentine M. Moghadam, Globalization and Social Movements: Islamism, Feminism, and the Global Justice Movement (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009). 82 Rania Maktabi, “Female Citizenship in the Middle East: Comparing Family Law Reform in Morocco, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon,” Middle East Law and Governance 5 (2013): 280–307. 83 Charles Tripp, The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Deniz Kandiyoti, “The Tripple Whammy: ­Towards the Eclipse of Women’s Rights,” Open Democracy (19 January 2015), https://www .opendemocracy.net/5050/deniz-kandiyoti/triple-whammy-towards-eclipse-of-women %E2%80%99s-rights. 84 Courtney Radsch, “Unveiling the Revolutionaries: Cyberactivism and the Role of ­Women in the Arab Uprisings,” (2012), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract _id=2252556; Annabelle Sreberny, “Women’s Digital Activism in a Changing Middle East,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47 (2015): 357–361. 85 Ann Elizabeth Mayer, “Rhetorical Strategies and Official Policies on Women’s Rights: The Merits and Drawbacks of the New World Hypocrisy,” Al-Raida xv (1998) 12–21; Tétreault, “A State of Two Minds: State Cultures, Women, and Politics in Kuwait”; ­Eleanor Abdella Doumato, “Women in Civic and Political Life: Reform under Authoritarian Regimes,” in Political Change in the Arab Gulf States: Stuck in Transition, ed. ­Andrzej Kapiszewski, Gwenn Okruhlik, and Mary Ann Tétreault (Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner, 2011); Deniz Kandiyoti, “Fear and Fury: Women and Post-Revolutionary ­Violence,” (Open Democracy, 2013). 

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All five dimensions can be discerned in Kuwait following women’s suffrage there in 2005. Kuwaiti women’s participation in international conferences, such as the 1995 Beijing un conference on women, influenced their strategic skills in addressing women’s issues at the domestic level.86 The number of female lawyers has increased significantly in the past decade, impacting on how women’s legal rights are being articulated in public and processed in court. Civil society groups are pressuring for laws on domestic violence, sexual harassment, and electronic crime to be drafted.87 Finally, improvements in the right to residence, education and health services to the children of Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis, including bidun husbands, are important steps to strengthened female citizenship in Kuwait. At the same time, Kuwaiti rulers contribute to “hardening of the core”88 through deeper social and economic divisions among stateless bidun according to who has a documented kinship relationship to a Kuwaiti citizen. Gender equality measures undermine thereby the building up of interest-based alliances among Kuwaitis who sympathise with the plight of the sizeable stateless bidun population in Kuwait. The aftermath of 2011 Uprisings has seen a mixed outcome when it comes to assessing female citizenship in Kuwait. With the exit of the four female MPs from parliament, the focus on Kuwaiti women’s legal autonomy and women’s issues as part of the political agenda in the National Assembly diminished sharply. After 2011, courts and the media emerged instead as significant arenas of debate.

The Judicialisation of Politics: Courts and the Media as Arenas of Struggle, 2009–2015 Courts in Kuwait have become important arenas for expanding women’s civic status and civil liberties. It was a judges’ ruling at the Constitutional Court in 2009 that created the precedent that enables Kuwaiti women to independently get their own passport. Another court ruling allowed female lawyers to be admitted as public prosecutors. Kuwaiti women are clearly reaping the fruits of the government’s investment in higher education. Female students have become certified lawyers at a

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https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/deniz-kandiyoti/triple-whammy-towards-eclipse -of-women%E2%80%99s-rights. Author interview with Khawla al-Atiqi, a board member of the Kuwaiti Teachers’ Union and a leading figure within the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood (Hadas), March 25, 2015. Meeting at the Kuwaiti Lawyers’ Union where lawyers and police officers discussed the issue of electronic crimes, in particular sexual harassment against women through social media, March 17, 2015. See James Sater’s Chapter 8.

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remarkable rate in the past two decades. In the late 1980s, only 20 women were registered as law students at the Faculty of Law at Kuwait University. In 1999, 120 women and 60 men were students. Data for the academic year 2011/2012 indicates that 60 per cent of law students at Kuwait University are women: out of 2,520 students, 1,520 were female and 990 male.89 With this enfranchisement, a new generation of female lawyers has become more emboldened to cross professional barriers, such as lawyer Shuruq alFailakawi, who sought a position at the Administrative Court in 2009 where she could become a public prosecutor (mutdaʾi ʿamm). Her application was rejected on the grounds that the position was only open to male candidates. Al-Failakawi got immediate support from mp Rola Dashti who raised her first question on this issue in parliament on October 4, 2009: What are the reasons that the Ministry of Justice relied on for not accepting Shuruq Fawzi al-Failakawi’s application for primary legal researcher […], and why did the announcement condition that applicants should be males in contradiction to Art. 19, 61 of the Judicial Administration Law? The issue was widely covered in the media after al-Failakawi filed a case against the Ministry of Justice arguing that there are no regulations barring qualified women from entering a legal sphere which – in time – would enable female lawyers to acquire the necessary qualifications to become a judge.90 The case was rejected by a judge in April 2010, who explained that female prosecutors are not in accordance with the Shariʿa, as postulated in Article 2 of the Kuwaiti Constitution.91 A year later, in July 2011, the Administrative Court published a new advertisement for vacant jobs. Six female law graduates applied. When their applications were rejected, all six filed separate lawsuits against the Ministry of Justice, arguing that barring women from public jobs was unconstitutional. Less than a year later, a court decision on 22 April 2012 cancelled the Ministerial Order that excluded women from jobs at the Ministry of Justice. 89

Annual Statistical Abstract 2012, p. 192, http://www.csb.gov.kw/Socan_Statistic_EN.aspx? ID=18. 90 At the time of writing, no Kuwaiti woman has been appointed as judge: “Kuwaiti woman fights for prosecutor’s job,” Kuwait Times, April 21, 2010, http://issuu.com/kuwaitnews/ docs/kt20100421/3. For an example of support in social media, see https://snowinq8 .wordpress.com/2010/04/21/shuruq-al-failakawi/. 91 “al-Istiʾnaf ayyadat hukm daʿwa Shuruq al-Failakawi qubuluha wakil niyaba,” [Court of Appeal supports the decision to deny Shuruq al-Failakawi’s case to be admitted as legal prosecutor], al-Watan, January 25, 2012, http://alwatan.kuwait.tt/articledetails .aspx?id=167436.

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The decision enabled the newly-appointed Minister of Justice, Yacoub al-Saneʾ to announce two years later – in May 2014 – that 22 female lawyers were to be admitted to entry-level positions, which would eventually allow them to become public prosecutors.92 The case of female lawyers’ employment in judicial positions shows how the Kuwaiti authorities supported higher education and encourage the nationalisation of the workforce, but failed – initially – to identify female law graduates as equally capable actors as their male counterparts. It also illustrates how pressures, exerted through individual courage, in parliament, and in the media, over a period of nearly five years, eventually led to a judicial review in court, and then acceptance by a ministerial decision. The case also shows how Kuwaiti media and networking activities have become significant arenas and sites of struggle for addressing women’s issues at an extraordinarily rapid rate since the liberalisation of the Kuwaiti media in 2006.93 Sisters are indeed doing it for themselves, judging from Kuwaiti women’s propensity for using the abundant number of technological facilities and media platforms at the domestic level. As such, Kuwaiti women are engaging in media activism and thereby ­“challenging prevailing social attitudes (…) [they] are breaking social taboos, raising new issues, and showing the enduring power of patriarchal values that lie before and behind state power.”94 A new generation of practising lawyers is using the media through weekly tv programmes. Particularly popular are legal programmes such as Raʾiyuhunna 92

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The Minister’s announcement was posted on @KhalfNews on May 11, 2014. The 22 female lawyers were appointed as public prosecutors later in a ceremony, along with 40 male lawyers; al-Hayat, November 6, 2014, http://alhayat.com/Articles/5540714. For an informed comment on the reforms, see Noura al-Malifi, “al-Yawm Wakilat Niyaba, Ghadan Qadiya,” [Today legal prosecutor, tomorrow a judge], Wikalat Akhbar al-Marʾa [Women’s News] January 24, 2015, accessed January 29, 2016, http://wonews.net/ar/index .php?act=post&id=13174. As of 2014, there exists a plethora of privately owned media outlets, including 14 Arabicand three English-language newspapers, and 16 television stations. The state owns five local radio stations and nine television channels. A total of 75 per cent of Kuwaitis are thought to use the Internet Freedom of the Press Kuwait: Freedom House, 2014, https:// freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2014/kuwait#.VcG-wrWzmac. On the impact of media liberalisation on Kuwaiti politics, see Kjetil Selvik, Jon Nordenson, and Tewodros Kebede, “Print Media Liberalization and Electoral Coverage Bias in Kuwait,” The Middle East Journal 69 (2015): 255–276. Radsch, “Unveiling the Revolutionaries: Cyberactivism and the Role of Women in the Arab Uprisings,” 359.

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(Their Opinion),95 Magazine96 on Scope tv, and Sada Sawt al-Muwatin (Echo of the Citizen’s Voice)97 on al-Shahed tv. In these programmes, Kuwaiti women address and debate a wide variety of issues such as divorce, domestic violence, and housing. Matters that were, only a decade ago, regarded as sensitive, such as the interpretation and application of religious tenets embedded in personal status laws, are discussed in public in new ways. Conclusion The extension of the franchise to Kuwaiti women in 2005 sheds light on the interplay between three factors that impact on female citizenship and Kuwaiti politics. Firstly, political rights strengthened societal pressures that sought to bolster women’s legal capacity through various venues: in parliamentary proposals on access to public housing and loans; by raising cases in court where judicial reviews granted Kuwaiti women the right to get a passport independently and access to legal positions such as that of public prosecutor; and in various media outlets, where previously sensitive issues related to personal status laws are being discussed and debated in public. Secondly, the presence of women in parliament between 2009 and 2011 correlated strongly with the number of law proposals raised targeting women’s issues. Female agency in parliament was important not only in terms of the law proposals raised by the four female MPs; simply the presence of the female parliamentarians impacted on the behaviour of male MPs, particularly those with Islamist and tribalist backgrounds, and triggered their propensity for raising more law proposals in support of women-specific issues. Thirdly, seen from a state formation perspective, the enfranchisement of Kuwaiti women delineates the demographic constitution of the Kuwaiti 95

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For an example of the problems facing Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG-V3e3c4sM, posted February 1, 2015, accessed January 29, 2016. Magazine is a weekly legal program presented by lawyers Nivine Maʿrifi and Abdel-ʿAziz al-Banwan. For a discussion on the application of the 1984 Personal Status Law with legal experts Laila al-Rashed and Dr Saʿd El-Enezi, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo rdM2yLKVU&feature=youtu.be, posted March 17, 2015, accessed January 29, 2016. For a program on divorce issues, see the discussion between lawyers Noura al-Raqm and Suʿad al-Shamali, posted on September 29, 2014, accessed January 29, 2016, https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=qCMvbIasIIY. For an interview with al-Shamali, see al-Anbaʾ, March 2, 2014, http://www.alanba.com.kw/ar/kuwait-news/449219/02-03-2014, accessed February 2, 2016.

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c­ itizenry. However, potential reforms in the 1959 Nationality Law that would enable women to pass over their citizenship to their children plays deeply into sensitive political considerations related to intermarriage between Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis, including the stateless bidun. This chapter has shown how women-specific issues related to housing and the welfare rights of female citizens married to non-Kuwaitis play into Kuwaiti politics in important ways and how citizenship status, political rights, and economic rights are intertwined and broadly conceived in a Gulf setting. A decade after Kuwaiti women were enfranchised, Kuwait’s oldest women’s association – The Women’s Cultural and Social Society (est. 1963) – fronted an alliance of civil society organisations under the banner “solidarity in support of the rights of children of a Kuwaiti female citizen married to a non-Kuwaiti” upon marking International Women’s Day on March 8, 2015.98 The issue of marriages between Kuwaiti women and non-Kuwaiti males, and the legal, social, and economic rights of children born of these mixed marriages are likely to be some of the most politicised issues with regards to strengthening female citizenship in Kuwait in the future. Bibliography Al-Awadhi, Badria. Al-Huquq al-Siyasiyya wa-l-Qanuniyya wa-l-Insaniyya lil-Marʾa alKuwaitiyya [Political, Legal and Human Rights for the Kuwaiti Woman]. Kuwait 2006. al-Mughni, Haya. Women in Kuwait: The Politics of Gender. London: Saqi, 2001. al-Mughni, Haya. “The Rise of Islamic Feminism in Kuwait.” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée (December 2010): 167–182. Al-Nakib, Farah. “Revisiting Hadar and Badu in Kuwait: Citizenship, Housing, and the Construction of a Dichotomy.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (2014): 5–30. Alshalfan, Sharifa. “The Right to Housing in Kuwait: An Urban Injustice in a Socially Just System.” (2013). http://www.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/programmes/kuwait/documents/ The-right-to-housing-in-Kuwait.pdf. Brown, Nathan J. When Victory is not an Option: Islamist Movements in Arab Politics. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2012. Brynen, Rex, Pete W. Moore, Bassel F. Salloukh, and Marie-Joëlle Zahar. Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democratization in the Arab World. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012. 98 “Waqfa Tadamuniyya li-Da’m Huquq al-Mar’a al-Kuwaitiyya al-Mutazawwija Min Ghayr Kuwaiti,” al-Raʾy, March 10, 2015.

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Rodriguez-Ruiz, Blanca, and Ruth Rubio-Marín (eds), The Struggle for Female Suffrage in ­Europe : Voting to Become Citizens. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Selvik, Kjetil, Jon Nordenson, and Tewodros Kebede. “Print Media Liberalization and Electoral Coverage Bias in Kuwait.” The Middle East Journal 69 (Spring 2015): 255–276. Sreberny, Annabelle. “Women’s Digital Activism in a Changing Middle East.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47 (2015): 357–361. Tétreault, Mary Ann. Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Tétreault, Mary Ann. “A State of Two Minds: State Cultures, Women, and Politics in Kuwait.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33 (2001): 203–220. Tétreault, Mary Ann. “Kuwait: Sex, Violence, and the Politics of Economic Restructuring.” In Women and Globalization in the Arab Middle East: Gender, Economy & Society, edited by Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Marsha Pripstein Posusney, 215–238: Lynne Renneier Publishers, 2003. Tétreault, Mary Ann. “Kuwait’s Parliament Considers Women’s Political Rights.” Middle East Report Online (2004). Published electronically 2 September. accessed January 29, 2016, www.merip.org/mero/mero090204. Tétreault, Mary Ann. “Bottom-up Democratization in Kuwait.” In Political Change in the Arab Gulf States: Stuck in Transition, edited by Andrzej Kapiszewski, Gwenn ­Okruhlik and Mary Ann Tétreault, 73–98. Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner, 2011. Tétreault, Mary Ann. “The Winter of the Arab Spring in the Gulf Monarchies.” Globalizations 8 (2011/10/01 2011): 629–637. Thompson, Elisabeth. Justice Interrupted: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle East. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. Tripp, Charles. The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Welchman, Lynn (ed.). Women’s Rights and Islamic Family Law: Perspectives on Reform. London: Zed Books, 2004. Welchman, Lynn. “Women, Family and the Law: The Muslim Personal Status Law ­Debate in Arab States.” In The New Cambridge History of Islam. Muslims and Modernity: Culture and Society since 1800, edited by Robert W. Hefner, 411–437. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. World Bank, The. “Opening Doors: Gender Equality and Development in the Middle East and North Africa.” In Mena Development Report. Washington: United States: World Bank Publications, 2013.

chapter 17

The Narrow Path: Acts of Citizenship by the Arab Youth Lessons from Egypt and Morocco Assia Boutaleb All commentators agree that the youth played a crucial role in the Arab Uprisings of winter 2010–2011. It is true that these uprisings can partly be seen as a reflection, one neither spontaneous nor mechanical, of qualitative changes in the sociological structures and relationships that have taken place as a result of demographic changes in Arab societies.1 Long-term demographic developments have weakened the patriarchal structures and led to the questioning of authority in general and of politics in particular. The youth has become a significant aspect of demography and an important socio-political factor, one that has put forward claims for dignity and civil rights. Its activism has changed the political map in a number of countries. At the same time, politics has become increasingly interested in youth. The notion that youth is the driving force behind current political mobilisations and the promotor of new forms of participation has become axiomatic.2 As political freedom and socioeconomic rights were at the heart of the uprisings, and because the youth had suffered the most from social, economic, and political exclusion, it is unsurprising that they stood at their foreground. Despite this, one important factor must be highlighted. The Arab youth is no different from the rest of the population; it makes the same claims to dignity, social justice, and equal rights. It may express them more loudly, capturing the attention of the media, but it plays the role of spokesman rather than constituting the avant-garde. It is important to bear this in mind because the distinction between the youth and the rest of the population is a political and social 1 Youssef Courbage and Emmanuel Todd, Le rendez-vous des civilisations (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2009). 2 See the special issue edited by Emma Murphy, “The Arab Youth and Politics,” Mediterranean Politics 17 (2012), and especially the introduction: Emma Murphy, “Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systemic Failure,” 5–22; and, on Morocco, Thierry D ­ esrues, “Moroccan Youth and the Forming of a New Generation: Social Change, Collective Action and Political Activism,” 23–40. On the youth during the Arab Spring, see also Stephanie Schwartz, “Youth and the ‘Arab Spring’,” United States Institute for Peace, April 28, 2011, accessed May 20, 2014, http://www.usip.org/publications/youth-and-the-arab-spring. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_019

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construction. It has its own social motivations and serves political objectives, but these can be, and often are, misleading. As Irene Bono demonstrated in the case of the Moroccan February 20 Movement, “the qualification of groups as youth movements, expressing a desire for specific participation contributes to the negation of the universalist character of the demands that the movements promote.”3 The struggle for citizenship is the key to understanding the Arab Uprisings and explains the wide-ranging public involvement in it.4 Conveying the message that the Arab youth has specific claims for rights only narrows the scale of the popular uprisings; if youth does play a unique role this lies more in forms of organisation and modalities of participation. According to a report on Egypt, whose conclusions can be extended to other Arab countries that experienced popular uprisings, over the last four years the changing power structures and the predicament of political transition “have influenced the evolution of citizenship rights […] This evolution has not been linear and the rights discourses of political actors were not consistent at all times.”5 In this chapter, I will argue that this statement can also be made about youth acts of citizenship. They are neither continuous nor permanent, and they face constraints and interruptions as well as experiencing periods of revival and moments of enhancement. In this sense, they can be seen and understood as strongly linked to and influenced by political and social contexts. For argument’s sake, and to avoid the trap of generalisation, I will mainly focus on Egyptian and Moroccan youth, with some examples from other countries. The concept of “acts of citizenship” is one of the key contributions c­ itizenship studies has made to the field. It allows one to revisit the concept of citizenship and to establish its “dynamical, projective and relational nature as well as issues about political subjectivation that it contains.”6 Acts of citizenship and political subjectivation interact with the legal dimension of citizenship, but due to its anthropological approach citizenship is no longer considered strictly as a status.7 Seen from an anthropological perspective, citizenship is a set of 3 Irène Bono, “Une lecture d’économie politique de la ‘participation des jeunes’ au Maroc à l’heure du printemps arabe,” Revue internationale de politique comparé 20 (2013): 145–166. 4 Roel Meijer, The Struggle for Citizenship: The Key to Understanding the Arab Uprisings, Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre Report, February 2014. The February 20 Movement has been designated the Moroccan version of the Arab spring; see note 20, below. 5 Ragab Saad and Moataz El Fegiery, Citizenship in Post-Awakening Egypt: Power Shifts and Conflicting Perceptions, European Policy Centre, January 21, 2014, accessed March 23, 2014, http:// www.epc.eu/pub_details.php?cat_id=1&pub_id=4087. 6 Catherine Neveu, “E pur si muove! Ou comment saisir empiriquement les processus de citoyenneté,” Politix 26 (2013): 207. 7 Catherine Neveu, “Les enjeux d’une approche anthropologique de la citoyenneté,” Revue européenne des migrations internationals 20 (2004): 89–101.

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practices of co-construction and dialogical space, more or less asymmetrical, between “actors” and “subjects.” Defined as “acts that produce citizens and their others,”8 acts of citizenship may be punctual or limited but they always imply the significant and concrete exercises of civic freedoms. Following the theorists of those acts, “the first principle to investigating acts of citizenship is to interpret them through their grounds and consequences, which includes subjects becoming activist citizens through scenes created.”9 Although it is not easy to extensively analyse the consequences of acts of citizenship, I will pay particular attention to the created scenes and their meanings. First, I will give a brief snapshot of the Arab youth and its participation in the uprisings. Secondly, I will try to present a few examples of youth acts of citizenship that occurred in the aftermath of those uprisings, which will enable me to highlight some of their characteristics. Finally, the idea of their reversible nature, or, at least, the constraints placed upon them due to political contexts will be explored and discussed. In other words, even if “youth is only a word,”10 for political authorities and actors it definitely exists as a category and social reality. If it is true that the Arab Uprisings have liberated the voices of the youth it is also true that these voices reached the ears of the powers-thatbe, for better or worse.

A Snapshot of Arab Youth and Their Participation in the Uprisings

Some brief demographic facts, without being too specific on the exact definition of youth, are crucial for understanding the position of the Arab youth. The proportion of the youth within the population of each country in the Middle East is extremely large, the second highest in the world – only in subSaharan Africa is it larger. Sixty per cent of the Arab world’s population is under thirty, twice the percentage of North America.11 Thirty per cent of the Arab population is between the ages of 14 and 24,12 and more than half the people in 8 9 10 11

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Egin F. Isin, “Theorizing Acts of Citizenship,” in Acts of Citizenship, ed. Engin F. Isin and Greg M. Nielsen (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008), 37. Ibid., 38. Pierre Bourdieu, Questions de sociologie (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1992 [1984]), 143. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, The Future of Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010–2030, January 27, 2011, accessed March 23, 2014, https://www.google.nl/?gws_ rd=ssl#q=Pew+Forum+on+Religion+and+Public+Life%2C+The+Future+of+Global+Mus lim+Population:+Projections+for+2010-2030. usaid, “usaid Convenes Conference of Arab Youth Development,” press release, ­November 14, 2011, accessed May 20, 2014. http://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press -releases/usaid-convenes-conference-arab-youth-development.

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the region today are under the age of 25.13 Moreover, youth unemployment is extraordinary high in the mena region; four times higher than in other regions of the world. In some areas youth unemployment rates are as high as 80 per cent.14 According to the data available for the years 2004–5, Tunisian youth represented more than three-quarters of the country’s total unemployed, and 30 per cent of those aged between 20–24 were unemployed. On a more qualitative level, Michael Hoffman and Ameney Jamal have summarised some characteristics of the Arab youth, based on an analysis of the Arab Barometer.15 The chances are that they are, comparing to youth from 20 years ago, on average, better educated, unemployed, more prone to protest, and less inclined to vote.16 Young Arabs are generally more supportive of political Islam and the implementation of Shariʿa than older citizens. Likewise, they are more likely to identify themselves primarily as Muslims than older generations. The data collected by the two authors suggest that youth mobilisation against the regime was not caused by grievances against the regime; “on the contrary, it appears that opportunities created by the uprisings – both real and perceived – may have motivated the youth to mobilise. The young are more connected with the rest of the Arab world and the international community than any generation that preceded it, and seems to be highly optimistic about what ordinary citizens can do.”17 To understand the Arab Uprisings, the youth can be considered “not only as developing beings or proto-adults but mostly as present beings and social agents with their own reality.”18 Their social and political exclusion is a major characteristic behind their rationales for and narratives of mobilisation. ­Nevertheless, while they may have been the most vocal, they were not the only actors. Rather, they played the role of spokesmen (and women) for the 13

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Mounira Chaieb, “Young in the Arab World: Lebanon,” bbc World Service, February 8, 2005, accessed March 23, 2014, https://www.google.nl/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Mounira+Chaieb% 2C+%E2%80%9CYoung+in+the+Arab+World:+Lebanon+%E2%80%9D%2C+BBC+Worl d+Service. Jack Shenker et al., “Young Arabs Who Can’t Wait to Throw off Shackles of Tradition,” The Guardian, February 14, 2011, accessed March 23, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/ world/2011/feb/14/young-arabs-throw-off-shackles-tradition. Even if the data used in their analysis predate the Arab Spring by several years, it can be assumed that they are still valid. Michael Hoffman and Amaney Jamal, “The Youth and the Arab Spring: Cohort Differences and Similarities,” Middle East Law and Governance 4 (2012): 168–188. Ibid., 187–188. Filip de Boeck and Alcinda Honwana, “Faire et défaire la société: enfants, jeunes et politique en Afrique,” Politique Africaine 80 (2000): 6.

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rest of the population. Nothing expresses this idea better than the following ­statement, made by a member of the February 20 Movement:19 “So far, the achievement of the movement is not that the king made promises. The true accomplishment is to have sent a clear message to all Moroccans: ‘we want to be citizens and not subjects’. And they have to do the same, because our message is theirs as well. We crossed red lines, we challenged the words and the position of the king. We gave the right to speak – with our constant presence in the streets – to those who never had it. People inside and outside the movement are no longer afraid to ask for their legitimate rights.”20 The Uprisings led to two situations: in the first, the country witnessed a change in political leadership and began political transition; in the second, the mobilisation failed to generate political changes. In both situations, however, youth political activism witnessed an unprecedented revival. In the first case, the youth’s participation can be strongly linked to the shifting political phases of the transitional period after the Arab Spring. Or, to put it another way, it was strongly influenced by the changing political configurations that dominated the transitions and their aftermath. That led to what can be called a “hiccup pattern” in youth participation: fully present and deeply involved during demonstrations and other forms of protest,21 it was conspicuously absent during elections and seriously under-represented in elected institutions. On an organisational level, this form of participation is reflected in the rapid formation and equally quick dissolution of youth political organisations or groups, such al-ʿAdl (Justice), al-Tayyar al-Misri (the Egyptian Current), or Misr al-Hurriyya wa-l-Waʾy (Free and Awakened Egypt) in Egypt.22 However, when results are meagre the dynamic engendered by protests dissipate quickly. Consequently, 19

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This broad coalition of Moroccan activists was not associated with any political party or specific civil society groups. It is named after the demonstrations that took place in more than fifty cities in the country, calling for democracy and a new Constitution, on February 20, 2011. Omar, 25 years, attac Morocco, quoted in Cédric Baylocq and Jacopo Granci, “‘20 Février’: discours et portraits d’un mouvement de révolte au Maroc,” L’année du Maghreb 8 (2012): 239. In Egypt the demonstrations and riots in Mohamed Mahmoud Street during NovemberDecember 2011, and in Tunisia the occupation of the central square in Tunis in front of the prime-minister’s office in March 2011, so-called Kasbah i and ii, as well as during the summer of 2012, were led by youth movements. Nadine Abdalla, “Egypt’s Revolutionary Youth: From Street Politics to Party Politics,” Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, March 11, 2013, accessed March 24, 2014, http://www .swp-berlin.org/en/publications/swp-comments-en/swp-aktuelle-details/article/ egypts_youth_from_street_politics_to_party_politics.html; see also Azzurra Meringolo,

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the youth often deserted the political field to invest instead in social activities, through what can be called moral affairs. As such, the protests against the “Daniel Gate” in Morocco23 during the summer of 2013 are emblematic: they were organised through communication channels previously used by the February 20 Movement and considered by former members of the movement as a revival of its spirit. This distinction between the two cases (or situations) is, however, theoretical, and the two types of participation can, in reality, overlap. Considering the experiences of uprisings in the Arab world, very few political groups used the label “youth” during and after them: the Yemeni Shabab al-Thawra can be regarded as an exception.24 Strikingly, at a particular point in time the most vocal and important youth groups stopped choosing names that referred to their youthful following: the April 6 Group in Egypt and the February 20 Movement in Morocco were named after the day they called for demonstrations. Besides this convenient mnemonic practice, the choice clearly reflects their strategy of making claims that go beyond those that are related purely to the youth itself. Indeed, the usual pattern was that the youth took up those themes they shared with older generations, as was the case with the Egyptian Kifaya movement, the Algerian Barakat movement,25 and the Moroccan February 20 Movement. None of the groups that became famous before and during the Arab uprisings were exclusively youth groups; their strategy of choosing common generational themes has been considered as having significantly enhanced their impact. However, it remains true that such movements, hastily and carelessly referred to as youth groups, have, in common, the fact that they behave more as

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­“Revolutionary, Creative, Heterogeneous and Unorganized: Young Egyptians Facing Elections,” Egypte/monde arabe 10 (2013), accessed March 23, 2014. http://ema.revues.org/3132. Called after the Spanish paedophile Daniel Galván Viña, who was sentenced to thirty years in prison in 2011 for the rape of 11 children in Kenitra. On the occasion of Throne Day (July 31, 2013) in Morocco, King Mohammed vi, according to a well-established tradition in the Kingdom, pardoned 1,000 detainees, among them Daniel Galván Viña. The ensuing outrage spread like wildfire on social networks and massive popular mobilisations occurred in several cities. Marine Poirier, “De la place de la libération (al-tahrir) à la place du changement (al-­ taghyir): transformations des espaces et expressions du politique au Yémen,” in Au cœur des révoltes arabes, ed. Amin Allal and Thomas Pierret (Paris: Armand Colin, 2013), 31–50. Meaning “enough” or “it’s enough,” this grassroots movement was founded on March 1, 2014 to protest against President Bouteflika’s announcement to run for a fourth term, and its Facebook page quickly attracted 32,000 fans. However, its horizontal nature and lack of leadership weakened the movement after the re-election of President Bouteflika.

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protest groups than opposition forces. It is necessary to make this division in order to understand their dynamics26 and the reasons they failed to transform themselves into sustainable movements.27 They simply lacked the resources to win elections. They were, however, extremely capable of explaining and analysing the political game and its rules, and the ins and outs of the electoral system. The innovative means of communications they introduced, such as use of the Internet and social networks, about which much has been written, have deepened this division, because they are far more capable of mobilising protest, disseminating indignation, and analysing the political situation than they are of mobilising people for electoral purposes. Following the uprisings and during the transitional phase, youth activists followed different paths and made varying choices. Nevertheless, in Egypt, for instance, the category of “the revolutionary youth” remains “quite a problematic category that lumps together different types of youth that have part in successive and simultaneous uprisings over the past three years in an unified political ‘bloc’.”28 Nevertheless, the uprisings and their aftermath produced various initiatives that enhanced the participation of the youth in the public sphere. Despite the meagre results of the Uprisings, something irreversible has occurred in the Hirschman’s “voice” with regard to youth.

Youth Acts of Citizenship, Horizontal Bonds, and Dialogical Work

The examples that follow are based on several field trips conducted during the Spring of 2012 in Egypt and from the beginning of 2014 in Morocco. In these two countries the youth initiated several projects aimed at promoting dialogue 26

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The distinction between opponent and protester is based on the classic definition of opposition. See, for instance, Leonard Schapiro, “Foreword,” Government and Opposition (1966): 2, where he argues that the main characteristic of the opponent is to gain power. As such, the Arab youth can hardly be described as an opponent, as it did not seek power. For more on this topic, see Assia Boutaleb, “L’enjeu égyptien: protestataires, opposants et ruse de la raison autoritaire,” Les Temps Modernes 664 (2011): 41–54. Assia Boutaleb, “Ce qu’un soulèvement fait aux espaces politiques: dynamiques de la protestation et de la mobilisation en Egypte,” in Les soulèvements populaires dans le monde arabe, ed. Michel Camau and Frédéric Vairel (Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2014), 201–220. Chaymaa Hassabo, “Les illusions perdus des ‘jeunes de la révolution’,” Orient 21, March 20, 2014, accessed May 20, 2014, http://orientxxi.info/magazine/egypte-les-illusions-perduesdes,0544.

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and discussion between themselves and with society at large. As well as being political activists and youth who were or became political militants, many young Moroccans and Egyptians practised activism in a more civic sense, or, in other words, performed what Engin Isin calls “acts of citizenship.” In fact, not focusing on the more “visible” youth allows us to see other youth profiles and therefore other means of engaging with them. One of the problems the uprisings revealed was, according to some of the youth, the distance that separated activists and “the street,” or ordinary people. If an emotional unity existed during the occupation of Tahrir Square, maintaining this unity over time turned out to be much more complicated. Such was the general feeling of the youth I met in Cairo. Finding a way to reach people, or the “street,” as some of them called it, was, therefore, a major challenge. As Ashraf, a volunteer from a group calling itself “tweetshare3,” put it: “In the beginning, we were three, three that followed the events, who were passionate about them without any political involvement or experience. However, we soon realised, after discussions with our siblings and neighbours, that the gap between people on the internet (activists) and the ‘real’ people was widening. So we decided that we, the youth, have to go (into the street) and explain the situation to the people.” During this process they employed various creative ways to reach the people. Tweetshare3 first set up a website, after which they attracted volunteers to set up a sensibilisation programme and organise an awareness campaign. One of their strategies was to select, a few days before the first round of the legislative elections of 2011–12, a big gas station in the al-Abbasiyya neighbourhood of Cairo, and for a week a group of six or eight volunteers dedicated three hours per evening to “explaining the situation to the people.” This station is famous as a meeting point for taxis, and the volunteers’ strategy was to distribute flyers explaining the function and meaning of the electoral process. On these flyers they printed charts explaining issues such as the composition of the parliament, the national topics it discusses, and electoral procedure. What they did not do was canvas for a particular political group; they did not “run for someone.” Instead, they explained that “we targeted the taxis because taxi drivers talk to everyone. In our country, for many people the taxis have the same function as the media.” “Take a cab and you’ll have all the information you need to know, not just about the city but also about politics,” explained Hassan, another member of the group. Through distributing flyers the group members created the opportunity to discuss politics with the drivers. They sometimes had to explain certain issues, but mainly they engaged in dialogue about the current political situation. Most importantly, this allowed them to engage in the patient work of sensibilisation of the value

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of voting, which led to the (re)appropriation for the people of the political issues that concerned them. As Amani explains: “The revolution has taught us that politics is ours. Not theirs. I can do something myself; I don’t have to wait for the elders to realise that something has to be done and to do it.” These acts of citizenship are not heroic transgressions of the political order or radical disruptions of civic norms. They are instead minor, everyday acts, such as discussing or arguing about issues of public interest, but through them a civic relationship between ordinary citizens is produced. Members of Tweetshare3 came from different social backgrounds but they pooled their resources and skills: one member knew a printer, another was an expert in computers or infographics, while a third made his car available to the group. Their activities were fairly modest, but repeated on a regular basis they gained clout. In the months before the elections they met on a daily basis to discuss their plans. After the election of Morsi as president their activities concentrated on the explication of the constitutional draft, and flyers were produced highlighting the importance of the constitution, entitled “Your Constitution is your Future,” while important newspaper articles were commented upon and explained. The example of the Cairo group had, by this time, been emulated by other groups, and in the Spring of 2012 no less than five other Tweetshare3 groups had sprung up in different provincial towns. Even if certain actions were specific to local circumstances, the general idea was to engage in general discussions with common citizens with whom the youth does not usually engage. Through these acts, this youth group gained experience in participating in public affairs and working for the common good. As one member remarked, “through the group, I met people whom I would never have spoken to before; I discovered that others think like me, or at least that others want to do things. I discovered that together with others (as a group) we have something to say and even to teach.”29 Their activities opened up a new world for the activists. Choosing the appropriate form of action, and evaluating its effects and meaning, led to intensive discussions among the group-members, defined their relationship with the public sphere, and determined their entrance into the civic arena. The same experience was analysed by Laila Abu Lughod during fieldwork in a village in Upper Egypt. There, she discovered that “youth were galvanized by the uprising to solve local problems in their own community, feeling themselves to be in a national space despite a history of marginalization. They also used a particular language for their activism: a strong language of social ­morality, 29

All the quotations are from my personal fieldworks notes of October 2012.

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not the media-friendly political language of ‘rights’ and ‘democracy’.”30 In the discourses and acts of the members of Tweetshare3, the emphasis was on their dialogical work and their relationships with others. This can be called the horizontal dimension of their activism, as opposed to the vertical, hierarchical relation of power, which is regarded as exclusively the state’s sphere. As such, the activities of the groups differ from those of other social movements, whose various politics are directed at the authorities upon whom claims are made. Citizenship acts are fostered at the margins of the state, as the latter is regarded as a subject of critical debate and suspicion, not an interlocutor and source of rights. If, in Egypt, the focus was on the learning process itself and how to communicate with other citizens, in Morocco the issue was explicitly formulated by some youth as “citizenship training.” In Morocco, the act of citizenship is formulated primarily in terms of self-expression; debate in itself is regarded as the beating heart of citizenship. This is especially significant for projects initiated by the February 20 Movement. As in Egypt, the idea that “something has to be done” was very strong, and was expressed in a host of different activities, ranging from the artistic to the educational. However, they had one characteristic in common: they always avoided official party politics. As in Egypt, the Moroccan uprisings, even if they were less distributive, were a triggering event. Their long-term effect was expressed by Hosni, a member of the “Theatre of the Oppressed” (Théâtre de l’Opprimé): “after 2011, we kept the spirit, but we changed the tools.”31 A few examples of significant discussion initiatives were: Falsafa fi 9zanqa (Philosophy in the Alley/Street), Capdema,32 the Prométhéus Institute for Democracy and Human Rights,33 and Women Choufouch.34 Their common aim was to encourage people to think about and d­ iscuss 30 31

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Laila Abu Lughod, “Living the ‘Revolution’ in an Egyptian Village: Moral Action in a ­National Space,” American Ethnologist 39 (2012): 21. Quoted in Camille Dupire, “Les Formes alternatives de participation populaire au lendemain d’un mouvement social: Étude de cas dans le Maroc ‘post-20 Février’,” (Master Dissertation IEP, Lille, 2014), 50. This is an abbreviation of “Cap Démocratie,” which can be translated as “towards democracy.” The institute was created on June 1, 2013 by 9 young Morrocans, most of whom were previously members of the 20 February group. The purpose was to conduct various activities to raise awareness of democratic values/human rights among the youth. Created by Majdouline Lyazidi and initially named “SlutWalk Morocco,” Women Choufouch is a feminist movement campaigning against sexual harassment in Morocco and for the promotion of women’s rights.

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“their relationships with each other, with the state, and with this ­culture of ­subordination,” to quote Tarik, a member of CapDema. As he explains, “we promote a participatory formula through which we aim to make people realise that they have something to say and that they have ideas about who they are, what they want […] and what kind of citizen they are. That’s why our last summer session will be about citizenship. The previous one was about the society’s project, what society we want.”35 Founded in 2008 by Moroccan students in France, CapDema started its activities in Morocco in 2011 with a summer camp. A brief look at its program and activities shows the pedagogical nature of its activities. For instance, it organised a regular “democafe” (démocafé), with critical discussions of issues such as national security, the role of the media, national pride, the function of democracy, and the foreign policy of Morocco. It also organised conferences on topics such as the “European Union and Morocco” and “The Monarchy and its Future,” as well as summer workshops. Debates were organised as a means of creating social networks and stimulating participants to engage in other arenas and to exert themselves further. It was quite common, for instance, to meet the same people in different activities, motivated by a desire to discuss and debate various topics. This marked, for some participants, the first step toward regular activism; on the other hand, greater self-consciousness, self-assertiveness, and outspokenness among the youth has become a general feature of the past two decades. Other initiatives were based on the need to discuss and deal with youth-specific issues. For example, the Student Union for Change in the Educational System (Union des étudiants pour le changement dans le ­système éducatif), known as uecse, or X with their members, was created during the summer of 2012, via social networks, to discuss and propose reforms to the Moroccan educational system. One of its main initiatives was the Popular University, which, in its approach and aims, resembled the initiative Falsafa fi 9zanqa. Open to all, and mostly organised in public spaces such as parks (for example, the Cervantes Park in Rabat), the courses of the Popular University covered themes including “good and bad,” “freedom,” and “morals or religion.” Often specialists are invited (lawyers, human rights activists, or professors), and their presentations are followed by a debate. Apart from the participatory dimension, these meetings have a clear pedagogical aim: each presentation is transcribed and made available on the organisation’s website, which also includes lessons on major philosophers or explications of philosophical issues. According to Anas Hmam, the founder of the Popular University, “discussing 35

Personal interview with Tarik, March 12, 2014.

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philosophical issues and subjects is important, first of all because they make people think, but also because in Morocco philosophy was repressed during the 1980s, the ‘years of led’. The state preferred to open departments of Islamic thought rather than philosophy. During these years, the state did not want us to think […]. In my view, (critical) thinking is the first and essential step to citizenship.”36 The number of participants varied considerably (from about 20 to 100), but, as with Tweetshare3 in Egypt, the initiative was taken up by groups in different cities, and in 2014 popular universities were established in Casablanca, Marrakech, and Tangiers. In all these initiatives the key words have been open discussion and freedom of speech. Everyone is allowed to speak and express their ideas. In this sense, the discursive dimension is essential to these acts of citizenship; through debating in such ways, the youth enact citizenship even when the official political establishment does not take them seriously and excludes them. These activities enabled youth activists to overcome their exclusion. For instance, Capdema did not limit its meetings purely to speeches, but also drew up concrete proposals for reforms and produced draft laws that were disseminated through social networks and on social media.37 The documents produced by Falsafa fi 9Zanqa, as well as the courses it put online, were primarily meant to be to be circulated in order to engender discussion among the youth and to serve as examples to be emulated. In all of these, the main idea was to convey that the youth not only have ideas but are aware of the major issues with which society is confronted. This ability to express their opinion is precisely what had been denied to them up to then. The discussions and debates they organised are dialogical acts of citizenship that allow them to re-appropriate issues of public interest. This re-appropriation is far from being a linear or irreversible process. Four years after the uprisings Tweetshare3 only continues to exist in two cities, and had to face accusations of being pro-al-Sisi. In the political arena the uprisings changed little, and the social position of the youth has not improved. The youth are still stigmatised and have been turned into a cause for exclusion, marginalisation, or, still worse, repression. While the advantage of acts of citizenship is that they are not as visible or prejudicial to public order as political activism, they suffer from their volatility and sensitivity to political contexts.

36 37

Personal interview with Anas Hmam, December 13, 2013. For instance, they presented a memorandum about the constitution, while their most recent work is focussed on the societal issue of abortion in Morocco.

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Youth: A Convenient Scapegoat

In a recent issue of the journal Anthropologie et Sociétés devoted to citizenship38 many authors underlined the fact that the construction of citizenship is, historically, a process that evolves “from below,” but one that also can be stopped or constrained from below as well. For instance, in that volume, Francine Saillant analyses how the Afro-Brazilian movement lacks an intermediary for the urban and educated elite to formulate and defend its claims, which constrained its ability to promote the citizenship rights of its members.39 In the case of the Arab youth, on the other hand, the limits and constraints should also be sought in the strategies and actions “from above.” It is not possible to speak about youth activism or civic activism without talking about repression. Indeed, if the youth are portrayed as spokesmen (and women) they will also be the target of coercion. In general, the police are highly suspicious of the youth, and of young men in particular. The youth are often portrayed by the state as a threat to the stability of society. In recent years, repression has increased to such an extent that the youth as a societal group has been put on trial, accused of a variety of crimes and seen as the main source of the deep societal crisis, increasing national insecurity, growing political chaos, and rampant cultural decay. The ambivalent attitude of the general public towards the uprisings is often associated with the role the youth played in them. In more concrete terms, political activists in general and the younger generation in particular are systematically put on trial on fabricated evidence. For instance, the charges brought by the public prosecutor against the ­Algerian activists of the Barakat movement were that they had organised a “non-­military gathering that may disturb public safety,” a curious accusation that goes back to a decree of 1975, the time of the one-party system, which relates to Articles 97 and 98 of the penal code.40 In Egypt, arrests are often made on charges of selling drugs. In Morocco, in May 2014 eleven members of February 20 Movement were condemned on charges of “illegal participation in a non-­authorised demonstration.” They had been arrested during April 6 38 39

40

Natasha Grangé and Catherine Neveau (eds), “Citoyennetés,” special issue of Anthropologie et Sociétés 33 (2009). Francine Saillant, “Droits, citoyenneté et réparations des torts du passé de l’esclavage: perspectives du mouvement noir au Brésil,” in “Citoyennetés,” Anthropologie et sociétés 33 (2009): 141–165. Ghania Mouffok, “Á Alger, 20 ans n’est plus le plus bel âge de la vie,” MondAfrique May 12, 2014, accessed May 25, 2014. http://mondafrique.com/lire/politique/2014/05/12/a-alger -vingt-ans-nest-pas-le-plus-bel-age-de-la-vie.

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labour union d­ emonstrations but they were able to prove the legality of and the authorisation for taking part in that demonstration. In the same year, the well-known rapper al-7aqad was arrested for illegally selling tickets to a football match. In a recent article Mâati Mounjib revisited a series of cases of resistance leaders and activists who had participated in or supported the February 20 Movement, ranging from members of the Islamist al-ʿAdl wa-lihsan to members of secular organisations, demonstrating that accusations were always related to sexual, financial, or drug scandals, and states that “for each activist, a ‘crime’ was fabricated, playing on the taboo of their ideology in order to discredit and undermine the Moroccan version of the ‘Arab Spring’.”41 Since the end of the summer of 2014, nearly 85 of the activists of the Moroccan Association of H ­ uman Rights (amdh) have been banned in the country. This general atmosphere of repression has sent a clear message that no-one is safe from prosecution, and created a climate where public initiatives are no longer seen as harmless. Acts of citizenship, partly because they are spontaneous and elusive, are, in such an atmosphere of repression, particularly discouraged. With so few visible and concrete results, the public sphere can become erratic, and in this respect the Egyptian case is the most revealing. Not everything can be explained by repression from above alone; in many cases it was supported by repression from below as well. In other words, not only do youths have to face societal and political suspicions, they have to accomplish social requirements such as finding a job, getting married, and, lastly, becoming adults and being considered as such by society. Because the youth are at a time of life when much has to be done, Arab youth acts of citizenship are, more than those of other categories of the population, dependant on the political and social context. They follow the ups and downs of Arab political transitions and their own socio-economic background. The paradox in the Arab world is that the demographic majority – the youth – has continued to be reduced to an activist minority trying to claim its place. For the Arab youth, the Arab Spring constituted a historical opportunity to drastically change its position in society, one it unfortunately missed. Nonetheless, it is clear that something has changed. Neither immutable nor predetermined, citizenship is strongly determined by asymmetrical power struggles. While this asymmetry seems to impose certain limits, at the same time it may be full of possibilities, as it does not exclude anything that is possible. As the French philosopher Jacques Rancière 41

Mâati Mounjib, “Setups and Slander against Morocco’s Dissidents: Sex, Drugs, Money and Videos,” Jadaliyya, April 14, 2015, accessed May 25, 2015. http://turkey.jadaliyya.com/ pages/index/21370/setups-and-slander-against-moroccos-dissidents_sex.

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stated, “political invention occurs in acts that are at the same time argumentative and poetical, shows of strength that open and reopen as frequently as may be necessary the worlds in which those acts of community are acts of community.”42 What Rancière refers to as acts of community (“actes de communautés”) can be called, in my view, acts of citizenship. However, one must not forget that citizenship is also a status, and that the struggle for it remains an important issue for the Arab youth, particularly after the Uprisings. Bibliography Abdalla, Nadine. “Egypt’s Revolutionary Youth: From Street Politics to Party Politics.” Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, March 11, 2013. Accessed March 24, 2014. http:// www.swp-berlin.org/fileadmin/contents/products/comments/2013C11_abn.pdf. Abu Lughod, Laila. “Living the ‘Revolution’ in an Egyptian Village: Moral Action in a National Space.” American Ethnologist 39 (2012): 21–25. Baylocq, Cédric, and Jacopo Granci. “‘20 Février’: discours et portraits d’un mouvement de révolte au Maroc.” L’Année du Maghreb 8 (2012): 239–58. Boeck de, Filip, and Alcinda Honwana. “Faire et défaire la société: enfants, jeunes et politique en Afrique.” Politique Africaine 80 (2000): 5–11. Bono, Irène. “Une lecture d’économie politique de la ‘participation des jeunes’ au Maroc à l’heure du printemps arabe.” Revue internationale de politique comparée 20 (2013): 145–166. Bourdieu, Pierre. Questions de sociologie. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1992 (1984). Boutaleb, Assia. “L’enjeu égyptien: protestataires, opposants et ruse de la raison autoritaire.” Les Temps Modernes 664 (2011): 41–54. Boutaleb, Assia. “Ce qu’un soulèvement fait aux espaces politiques: dynamiques de la protestation et de la mobilisation en Egypte.” In Les soulèvements populaires dans le monde arabe, edited by Michel Camau and Frédéric Vairel, 201–220. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2014. Chaieb, Mounira. “Young in the Arab World: Lebanon.” BBC World Service, February 8, 2005. Accessed March 23, 2014. https://www.google.nl/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Mounira+C haieb%2C+%E2%80%9CYoung+in+the+Arab+World:+Lebanon+%E2%80%9D% 2C+BBC+World+Service. Courbage, Youssef, and Emmanuel Todd. Le rendez-vous des civilisations. Paris: ­Editions du Seuil, 2009.

42

Jacques Rancière, La Mésentente (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1995), 89.

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Desrues, Thierry Desrues. “Moroccan Youth and the Forming of a New Generation: Social Change, Collective Action and Political Activism.” Mediterranean Politics 17 (2012): 23–40. Dupire, Camille. “Les formes alternatives de participation populaire au lendemain d’un mouvement social: étude de cas dans le Maroc ‘post-20 Février’.” Master Dissertation IEP de Lille (135p.), 2014. Ghania Mouffok, “Á Alger, 20 ans n’est plus le plus bel âge de la vie.” MondAfrique, May 12, 2014. Accessed May 25, 2014. http://mondafrique.com/lire/politique/2014/ 05/12/a-alger-vingt-ans-nest-pas-le-plus-bel-age-de-la-vie. Grangé, Natasha, and Catherine Neveu (eds). “Citoyennetés.” Special Issue of Anthropologie et Sociétés 33/(2009): 2–275. Hassabo, Chaymaa. “Les illusions perdus des ‘jeunes de la révolution’.” Orient 21 (2014). Accessed May 20, 2014. http://orientxxi.info/magazine/egypte-les-illusions-perdues -des,0544. Hoffman, Michael, and Jamal Amaney. “The Youth and the Arab Spring: Cohort Differences and Similarities.” Middle East Law and Governance 4 (2012): 168–188. Isin, Egin F., and Greg M. Nielsen (eds). Acts of Citizenship. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Mounjib, Mâati. “Setups and Slander against Morocco’s Dissidents: Sex, Drugs, Money and Videos.” Jadaliyya, April 14, 2015. Accessed May 25, 2015. http://turkey.jadaliyya. com/pages/index/21370/setups-and-slander-against-moroccos-dissidents_sex. Meijer, Roel. The Struggle for Citizenship: The Key to Understanding the Arab Uprisings. Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre Report, February 2014. Meringolo, Azzurra. “Revolutionary, Creative, Heterogeneous and Unorganized: Young Egyptians Facing Elections.” Egypte/monde arabe 10 (2013). Accessed March 23, 2014. http://ema.revues.org/3132. Murphy, Emma. “Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systemic Failure.” Mediterranean Politics 17 (2012): 5–22. Neveu, Catherine. “Les enjeux d’une approche anthropologique de la citoyenneté.” Revue européenne des migrations internationals 20 (2004): 89–101. Neveu, Catherine. “E pur si muove! Ou comment saisir empiriquement les processus de citoyenneté.” Politix 26 (2013): 205–222. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, The Future of Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010–2030, January 27, 2011. Accessed March 23, 2014. https://www.google .nl/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Pew+Forum+on+Religion+and+Public+Life%2C+The+Future+ of+Global+Muslim+Population:+Projections+for+2010-2030. Poirier, Marine. “De la place de la libération (al-tahrir) à la place du changement ­(al-taghyir): transformations des espaces et expressions du politique au Yémen.” In Au cœur des révoltes arabes, edited by Amin Allal and Thomas Pierret, 31–50. Paris: Armand Colin, 2013.

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Rancière, Jacques. La Mésentente. Paris: Editions Galilée, 1995. Saad, Ragab, and Moataz El Fegiery. Citizenship in Post-Awakening Egypt: Power Shifts and Conflicting Perceptions. European Policy Centre, January 21, 2014. Accessed March 23, 2014. http://www.epc.eu/pub_details.php?cat_id=1&pub_id=4087&year=2014. Schapiro, Leonard. “Foreword.” Government and Opposition 1 (1966): 1–6. Schwartz, Stephanie. “Youth and the ‘Arab Spring’.” United States Institute for Peace, April 28, 2011. Accessed May 20, 2014. http://www.usip.org/publications/ youth-and-the-arab-spring. Shenker, Jack, et al “Young Arabs Who Can’t Wait to Throw off Shackles of Tradition.” The Guardian, February 14, 2011. Accessed March 23, 2014. http://www.theguardian. com/world/2011/feb/14/young-arabs-throw-off-shackles-tradition. USAID. “USAID Convenes Conference of Arab Youth Development.” Press release, November 14, 2011. Accessed May 20, 2014. http://www.usaid.gov/news-information/ press-releases/usaid-convenes-conference-arab-youth-development.

chapter 18

The Bidun Protest Movement as an Act of Citizenship Claire Beaugrand It is not about naturalisation (tajnis), it is about existing (wujud)

Dr. abdul hakim al-fadhli, member of the bidun movement Muwatinun/ Citizens

⸪ Introduction A particular category in the sociology of Kuwait, and increasingly used in other Gulf states, the term biduns refers to people from nearby regions (Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia) seeking naturalisation in a state that considers them as being foreigners and thus “illegally” on its territory.1 The case of the biduns is peculiar as they do not constitute a consistent ethnic or religious group per se. Rather, the term refers to a state-imposed and administratively-based status, and illustrates a phenomenon of exclusion based on a criterion that cannot be described as a primitive affiliation, although the bulk of the biduns do arguably belong to straddling tribes including both sects of Islam.2 More accurately, the category is defined by an original failure – an offence passed on from 1 The number of biduns in Kuwait is subject to controversy. The official institution set up in November 2010 to close the file on this particular type of “illegal residents,” the Central System to Resolve Illegal Residents’ Status (later referred to in this chapter as the Central System), said it inherited 105,702 individual registered cases from the preceding organisation specialised in bidun affairs. Yet some bidun activists state that the real number of biduns in Kuwait is closer to 240,000, reflecting the government’s failure to update its statistics – based on the fact that many children of biduns, lacking proper birth certificates, do not appear in the figures (interview with the author, Kuwait, April 26, 2014). 2 This is due to the fact that branches of various tribes from southern Iraq converted to Shiʿism during the nineteenth century in order to avoid the Ottoman conscription. Yitzhak Nakash, “The Conversion of Iraq’s Tribes to Shiism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 26 (1994): 443–63. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004340985_020

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g­ eneration to generation – to comply with either the registration process of the Nationality Committees (between 1961 and 1965) or, up to the end of the 1980s, the appropriate rules of the 1959 Aliens Residence Law, hence its casting as “illegal” by the government in 1986. Since 1986, and particularly following the February 1991 liberation of Kuwait, the government’s repressive stance towards the biduns has come to play a particular role in Kuwaiti politics. Firstly, in a country deeply traumatised by the Iraqi invasion, where the basis of the emir’s power was seriously questioned both from within the royal family (the new generation of princes) and the Kuwaiti political class,3 the group – along with Palestinians – played the role of scapegoat, as it became conflated with the image of the alien and, in particular, of the Iraqi alien.4 As the cultural proximity between biduns and nationals may have somehow blurred the lines between citizens and aliens, their representation as foreigners also reinforced the boundary that the state’s generous welfare policies had gradually drawn between Kuwaitis and nonKuwaitis,5 creating a sense of superiority among the former that has become entrenched in the Kuwaiti national identity.6 Omar al-Shehabi shows that the impermeable boundary between citizens and non-citizens is fundamental for the stability of the imbalanced and heterogenous Gulf societies: “citizens and expatriates often became embedded in a network of control against each other as well as against members of their own groupings.”7 Secondly, the various Kuwaiti political actors, particularly the opposition, have often raised the bidun imbroglio and the government incapacity to definitively solve it in Parliament in order to use it as a political tool to embarrass the rulers, if not as a bargaining chip to obtain advantages for themselves and their constituencies. While the

3 Fatiha Dazi-Héni, “Coups de théâtre à Koweït-City,” Outre-Terre 1 (2006): 281–94. 4 Human Rights Watch, The Bedoons of Kuwait: “Citizens without Citizenship” (New York: ­Human Rights Watch, 1995). Amnesty International looked at the period under martial law in Kuwait Cases of “Disappearance,” Incommunicado Detention, Torture, Extrajudicial Execution under Martial Law (London: Amnesty International, October 1992). 5 Jill Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Jill Crystal, Kuwait: The Transformation of an Oil State (Boulder co: Westview Press, 1992). 6 The phenomenon is analysed as “contra-distinction” by Anh Nga Longva, “Neither Autocracy nor Democracy but Ethnocracy: Citizens, Expatriates and the Socio-Political System in Kuwait,” in Monarchies and Nations: Globalisation and Identity in the Arab States of the Gulf, ed. Paul Dresch and James Piscatori (London: i.b. Tauris, 2005), 114. 7 Omar Al-Shehabi, “Histories of Migration to the Gulf,” in Transit States: Labour, Migration & Citizenship in the Gulf, ed. Abdulhadi Khalaf, Omar Al-Shehabi and Adam Hanieh (London: Pluto Press, 2014), 16.

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issue has long been seen as intractable in Kuwait, biduns’ protests erupted in the context of the broader social mobilisation that swept through the Middle East and North Africa as a response to the long-standing impasse; between 2011 and 2014, biduns took part in a number of demonstrations on the outskirts of Kuwait City, where the majority live. This chapter explores the way in which the protest movement affected the role that this issue plays in Kuwaiti society and politics. While bidun activism predates the Arab Spring, despite being less generously covered in the press, the organisation of a sustained demonstration movement represents a relatively new form of contention in the biduns’ repertoire of action. Before this, their strategy had been mainly non-confrontational, using patronage links to try to obtain favours. Like other disenfranchised groups in Kuwait – for example, Kuwaiti women – they had relied on allies in Parliament, tried to exert pressure on MPs, organised peaceful rallies, and built networks to reach decision-makers at the top. While the women’s movement gained real momentum in the first half of the 2000s8 and its fight was eventually successful in obtaining voting rights for women in May 2005, the distance gradually built between biduns and Kuwaitis and the lack of incentive for the Kuwaiti elites to solve an issue that would not gain support amongst Kuwaiti citizens, led the bidun movement to adopt a different strategy in their search for citizenship. This chapter attempts to go beyond the positivist, legalistic approach to citizenship as a formal, legal category since the option of naturalisation for the biduns (even though it would only have been for a small proportion of them) has so far failed to materialise. Rather, it uses a different theoretical framework and analyses the 2011 bidun protest movement as a struggle of abject people that, in the academic literature on citizenship, refers to undocumented or illegal immigrants excluded from the body politic and with no formal existence. Scholars of critical citizenship studies have advocated a shift in the theoretical approach to citizenship that could accommodate the practices carried out by abjects, who, by virtue of their acts, constitute themselves as legal or political subjects, hence carrying out “acts of citizenship.”9 This approach, positing the

8 Mary Ann Tétreault and Haya al-Mughni, “From Subjects to Citizens: Women and the Nation in Kuwait,” in Women, States and Nationalism: at Home in the Nation, ed. Sita RanchodNilsson and Mary Ann Tétreault (London: Routledge, 2003), 147–67; Mary Ann Tétreault, “A State of Two Minds: State, Cultures, Women, and Politics in Kuwait,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33 (2001): 203–20. 9 Engin Isin and Greg M. Nielsen (eds), Acts of Citizenship (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Engin F. Isin, Citizens without Frontiers (London-New York: Continuum, 2012), 108–46.

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agency of individuals or groups as political entities, takes the frontier between inclusion and exclusion as its main area of investigation in order to analyse how the understanding and recognition of rights evolve and how legal and political boundaries can shift. Such research originated in the analysis of the struggles of undocumented immigrants, clandestine workers, and illegal persons for rights and regularisation in Western contexts.10 In Kuwait, biduns, after two decades of the deprivation of their rights, certainly qualify as abjects, falling beyond the scope of the law and disturbing the social dichotomy that is fundamentally based on nationality. However, unlike other disenfranchised groups, their struggle has had little influence on government policies towards them, let alone put them in the position of interlocutors with decision makers. Despite the fact that their actions did not lead to the resolution of the bidun issue, the question arises as to whether their actions have transformed the biduns into political and legal subjects. How did their protest movement change the Kuwaiti politics of intermediaries, patronage, and clientism? Did it manage to influence perceptions and norms in Kuwaiti society? As some Kuwaitis temporarily joined the disobedience movement, what kind of impact, if any, did the momentum of the movement have on the society? What kind of symbolism was invented during the period of contestation? These are the questions that this chapter intends to tackle when analysing the internal dynamics of the bidun movement, its relationship with Kuwaiti society, and its ties to international solidarity networks in terms of organisation and, even more so, of the debates it triggered concerning the ideas of national belonging and transnational activism. This chapter will make a contribution to the scholarship on social movements emanating from non-citizen groups, but

10

For an overview of the literature on the struggle of illegal migrants in Europe, see ­ oopmans et al., Contested Citizenship Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe (MinK neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); Anne McNevin, “Political Belonging in a Neoliberal Era: The Struggle of the Sans-papiers,” Citizenship Studies 10 (2006): 135–51; Iker Barbero, “Expanding Acts of Citizenship: The Struggles of Sinpapeles Migrants,” Social & Legal Studies 21 (2012): 529–47. For the French case of sans-papiers, see Etienne Balibar et al., Sans papiers: l’archaïsme fatal (Paris: La Découverte, 1999); Julie Siméant, La cause des sans-papiers (Paris: Presses de Sciences-Po, 1998); Pierre Barron et al., (eds), On bosse ici, on reste ici. La grève des sans-papiers: une aventure inédite (Paris: La Découverte, 2011). For North America, see Anne McNevin, “Undocumented Citizens? Shifting Grounds of ­Citizenship in Los Angeles,” in Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement, ed. Peter Nyers and Kim Rygiel (New York: Routledge, 2011), 165–83; Peter Nyers, “The Regularization of Non-Status Immigrants in Canada: Limits and Prospects,” Canadian Review of Social Policy 55 (2005): 109–14.

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in a non-Western, non-liberal democratic context, where the understanding of being political is itself largely constrained.11 The empirical material of this chapter is based on fieldwork conducted in April 2014 in Kuwait. In addition to the press archives held at the Information Centre of the newspaper al-Qabas, it includes interviews with key actors from the bidun movements, conducted both before and after 2011, and with lawyers, politicians, members of parliament, and Kuwaiti activists.

Abject Spaces and the Manufacturing of Aliens

It was a secret cabinet decision in 1986 that forced the biduns into a position of non-existence or “abject” existence: claiming to be Kuwaitis but unrecognised as such, their right to have rights was suspended until the government could ascertain their original identity. After the Iraqi invasion of 1990, the b­ iduns were gradually stripped of all the rights they had previously enjoyed when the government had tolerated their presence on Kuwaiti soil. The goal of this new strategy was to compel them to confess their “true origin” and to dissuade many others from hiding their passports and thereby join the ranks of those claiming to be of Kuwaiti nationality.12 Contrary to other countries whose immigration regimes created illegal people,13 Kuwaiti state policies contributed to the alien-ness of the bidun population, de-legitimising their claims to be entitled to Kuwaiti nationality. Here, their abject existence stemmed not so much from an irregular status in a specific territory as from an irregular claim to nationality in the eyes of the state. The thoroughly-researched policies of rights deprivation towards the ­biduns14 in the 1990s must be understood against the background of the creation of abject spaces and the manufacture of alien-ness. In human rights literature on the biduns, marginal spaces where rights deprivation took place 11

12 13 14

Anh Nga Longva, “Citizenship in the Gulf States: Conceptualization and Practice,” in Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications, ed. Nils Butenschøn, Uri Davis, and Manuel Hassassian (Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 179–97. As a result, the bidun population was estimated at around 220,000 in 1990, according to the Central System. Iker Barbero, “Orientalising Citizenship: The Legitimation of Immigration Regimes in the European Union,” Citizenship Studies 16 (2012): 751–68. See reports of Human Rights Watch, in particular since the first 1995 report: The Bedoons of Kuwait.

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have often been overlooked, yet they are an essential part of their reduction to non-existence. Abject Spaces The majority of biduns are today concentrated in three particular areas of lowincome housing located in the outer areas of the country: Tayma, Sulaybiyya,15 and the oil town of Ahmadi, in the south of the country. Although they are not, strictly speaking, camps, as they never were designed as such, these spaces nevertheless have a different history from the “official” one of modern urban development in Kuwait. They constitute the flip side of this modernity, when the emerging state was struggling to keep pace with the mushrooming shanty towns on the periphery of the main urban centres. This applies even more strongly to the oil city of Ahmadi, where the Kuwaiti Oil Company functioned as the main job provider. With a stronger assertion of state sovereignty on both people and territories, these spaces developed in the 1990s into de facto “abject spaces” of a kind – i.e., “spaces in which the intention is to treat people neither as subjects (of discipline) nor as objects (of elimination) but as those without presence, without existence, as inexistent beings, not because they don’t exist, but because their existence is rendered invisible and inaudible through abject spaces.”16 Contrary to camps, where undesirables are put aside after denaturalisation, as described by Hannah Arendt, “abject spaces” are places where subjects are “processed” as inexistent beings.17 The link between informality, the rapid development of peripheral and marginal housing spaces, and the emergence of abjects requires investigation. While it is not clear how and where the 20 percent of biduns who are not in these areas live, the spatial distribution of biduns is estimated roughly by a bidun activist as follows: 25 per cent each in Tayma and Sulaybiyya, 10 per cent in ­Ahmadi, and 20 per cent in Jleib al Shuyukh (next to the former Shadadiyya, historically an area of informal housing north of Kuwait airport).18

15

16

17 18

Tayma is located in Jahra, 33 km west of Kuwait City, while Sulaibiyya’s “popular housing” (see note 26, below), 18 km from the capital, off the main road to Jahra, constitutes a deadend area. Engin Isin and Kim Rygiel, “Abject Spaces: Frontiers, Zones and Camps,” in The Logics of Biopower and the War on Terror: Living, Dying, Surviving, ed. Elizabeth Dauphinee and Cristina Masters (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 184. Isin and Rygiel, “Abject Spaces,” 184. Interview with the author, Kuwait, April 26, 2014.

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The biduns were first found in the oil town of Ahmadi. Built in 1946 during the British mandate at the beginning of the Kuwait Oil Company (koc),19 Ahmadi is a self-contained city, divided into a northern part for management employees and a southern sector for those less qualified (e.g., firefighters and security guards). The northern area comprises concrete residential properties with gardens, while the houses of the southern part, where the bidun now live, consist of corrugated iron. Fieldwork interviews retracing biduns’ genealogy showed that, as a rule, the first generation of biduns worked in the oil sector that developed after 1948, being paid on a daily basis. Yet after a while they generally left this type of work for more stable employment in the Ministries of Defence or the Interior. Sometimes this transition towards more stable work occurred within the second generation, with the father working in koc and the children as ministry employees. The history of the biduns is closely linked with the influx of regional labourers who, in search of employment, came to live in informal housing, known in Kuwait as ʿashish.20 The growth of shanty towns, mainly populated by Bedouins during particular periods of economic development and mass migration, raised the crucial question of integration and the exclusion/isolation of newcomers. Farah al-Nakib has shown how urban policies have helped shape Kuwaiti social identities, and eventually entrenched the badu/hadhar (Bedouin/ urbanite) dichotomy. She demonstrates how badu housing at the periphery of Kuwait City in self-­contained areas with relatively poor state services led to the social construction of the category of badu as a “backward” underclass.21 Likewise, the settlement of residents with undefined status in informal housing partly accounts for the construction of the bidun as a social category and their “transition from one subjecthood to another”22 – i.e., from undefined subjects to abjects. Despite constant attempts by the government to demolish the informal housing structures in several areas of south and west Kuwait City, these kept on being developed up to 1978. As the government rushed to circumscribe and suppress the phenomenon, the resettlement of the citizens marked the 19

20 21 22

Founded in 1934, the Kuwait Oil Company was a 50–50 joint venture between the AngloPersian Oil Company and Gulf Oil Corporation. A subsequent agreement gave the British control over the koc. During the interviews the ʿashish figure prominently in the recollection of bidun family histories. Farah Al-Nakib, “Revisiting Hadhar and Badu in Kuwait: Citizenship, Housing and the Construction of a Dichotomy,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (2014): 5–30. Isin and Rygiel, “Abject Spaces,” 196.

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beginning of an increased differentiation on the basis of entitlements and privileges. Holders of Kuwaiti nationality of Bedouin stock were given priority and granted better housing conditions than other non-citizen residents. Among the latter, those holding permanent jobs were also eligible for specific housing schemes. For instance, during the period of ʿashish clearing in the late 1970s employees of the army and police force were provided with housing in buyut shaʿbiyya or “popular housing.”23 A 1978 study published in Al-Raʾy al-ʿ Amm24 mentioned that the government planned to build 4,150 housing units in Jahra (each unit based on a 8-member family, to 33,200 people) as well as 5,546 (45,000 people) in Sulaibiyya, in order to eradicate the phenomenon of ʿashish by December 1979.25 According to this plan, police were to be housed in Tayma, located in Jahra, while Sulaibiyya’s popular housing was to be dedicated to the military. This was the period in which the category of biduns, who filled the rank and file of the security forces, came to be associated with this type of housing.26 In the shaʿbiyyat, as they came to be known, different people of various origins lived together, despite having little or no cohesiveness apart from their common employment. The Manufacturing of Aliens Since it became almost impossible to disentangle the different claims – as some biduns would be genuinely without nationality while other p ­ assport-bearers expected to be naturalised if they merged with the former – the government resorted to a policy of lumping everybody together, tarring the whole b­ idun 23

24 25 26

“Popular” here does not refer to any “preferred” type of housing, but derives from the Arabic “people” (shaʿb). It denotes a lower-class sort of accommodation, comparable to “council housing” in the uk or “public housing” in the us, with the difference that in Kuwait housing is state-provided to all citizens but with different quality levels among nationals – and thus all the more substandard for biduns. “Dirasa ʿan mushkilat al-ʿashish fi-l-Kuwait,” al-Raʾy al-ʿAmm, March 17, 1978. “Lajnat al-ʿAshish tajtamuʿ al-sabt li-wadhaʾ khata izalat al ʿashish,” al-Anbaʾ, September 7, 1978. The 1968 law on the military provides some explanation for this phenomenon: while the law permitted non-Kuwaitis (that is, mostly Westerners) to be employed in a technical capacity or as experts on a temporary basis, it required citizenship for all other military positions – whether officers, soldiers, or policemen. This provision, however, remained silent as far as the recruitment of stateless people was concerned. The large number of Bedouins who were hired by the armed forces were perceived at the time as enjoying an undefined “limited citizenship,” a word used in a 1989 piece of research on the history of the Kuwaiti police. Muhammad Al-Fahed, “An Historical Analysis of Police in Kuwait: Prospects for the Future” (PhD diss., University of Exeter, 1989), 230.

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c­ategory with the same brush. This policy started in 1986 and continued throughout the 1990s. The concept of illegality is here used on a “class” rather than an individual basis. It is worth noting that Kuwait is not the only country to have implemented such policies based on “national origins.” It is sufficient here to cite the example of the United States which, despite its boast of being a nation of immigrants, has also turned certain immigrants into aliens;27 between 1924 and 1965 in the us, the creation of the idea of national origin as a racial category and identifier – compounded by the new post-1924 definition of illegality among immigrants (until then all of whom were welcome) – ­eventually became the basis for the exclusion of Mexicans, Filipinos, Chinese, and Japanese nationals along the country’s southern, western and eastern borders, while law enforcement on the border with Canada was much more lenient. Similarly, in Kuwait the idea of “national origin” – or, more precisely, “original nationality” – became crucial in drawing the line between insiders and outsiders: it defined the inhabitants residing in the country in 1920,when the small city-state repelled an attack launched by the ikhwan forces of Abd alʿAziz ibn al-Saʿud from the Arabian Peninsula, against other migrants from the same region who were naturalised on a tribal basis. In the Kuwaiti case, an entire class of more or less long-term immigrants28 was, therefore, redefined as illegal after 1986. It is interesting here to trace the genealogy of the idea of “illegality” and its application in Kuwait. The classification of the biduns as illegal residents took place against the background of a general struggle against lawlessness in the country’s periphery. In 1985, for instance, the municipal council of Kuwait City used the term “illegality” in its attempt to bring the ʿashish under control by licencing them.29 The idea of illegal residents evokes the image of workers who have crossed the border illegally in search of jobs, but ignored the early fight against poverty and shanty towns near oil fields, the airport, and the oases; it conceals the history of the now-disappeared ʿashish and the popular cheap housing projects built far from the sight of citizens and foreigners alike. The state-sanctioned narrative portrays the biduns as coming to Kuwait to take advantage of the generosity of the Kuwaiti state, hiding or destroying their original documentation in order to

27 28 29

Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America ­(Princeton nj: Princeton University Press, 2003). Despite the fact that the word “immigrant” (muhajirun) is banned from the Kuwaiti ­vocabulary, it must be said that it is an appropriate term for the people under discussion. al-Qabas, August 5, 1985.

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obtain the benefits of Kuwaiti nationality, and thereby it simply reduces them to their economic dimension and deprives them of agency.30 The government added a cultural stigma to this initial geographical seclusion by casting the biduns’ illegality after 1986 as an existential threat. The 1980s was not only marked by the Iran-Iraq war (1980–88), from which Kuwait tried to shield itself while supporting Iraq, but also witnessed a series of Shiʿite terror attacks on the emirate.31 Ironically, it was the government’s policy of stigmatisation that gave the bidun some sort of consistency and substance. In the absence of any real prospect for naturalisation, the discourse of the authorities with regard to the management of illegal immigrants was to refer to them as a collective and undifferentiated entity while at the same time dealing with people on an individual basis, leading to a mentality of “every man for himself.” In attempting to justify the reduction of biduns to their status of abjects confined to a status of invisibility, from the 1990s the government constructed the category as a security, economic, and cultural threat. Before 1986, perceived government inaction towards this “grey” category of residents in Kuwait had led to some criticism. In a famous speech made in 1985 at the National Assembly, Ahmad Saʿdun, the then-speaker of Parliament, used the image of a “time bomb” to refer to the bidun issue, an idea that has become a topos amongst politicians to embarrass the government. Following the Iraqi invasion of 1990– 91, the government cast the biduns as a fifth column, the “enemy within,” giving more weight to the previous image of the “alien within,” while the small number of biduns enrolled in the Iraqi Popular Army added credibility to this perception of the biduns as traitors. According to the Central System’s spokesperson, 900 individuals had been rejected from becoming naturalised as a result of their cooperation with the Iraqi Popular Army.32 Moreover, as a result of their illegal status many biduns had been forced to break the law (driving while not having a drivers’ licence, working without permits, etc.),33 and some of

30

31 32 33

Vora denounces, in the case of the Indian diaspora, exactly the same practice of dehumanising people by reducing them to their economic contribution. See Neah Vora, ­Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora (Durham nc: Duke University Press, 2013), 117–44. See Lori Plotkin-Boghardt, Kuwait amid War, Peace and Revolution: 1979–1991 and New Challenges (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006). al-Qabas, Kuwait, April 29, 2014. Until the Council of Ministers’ Decision No. 409/2011, promulgated on March 6, 2011, restoring to them a previous set of civil and human-rights.

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them have been flagged as a security risk (given the status quyud amniyya).34­ Furthermore, the question of the economic cost of naturalisation is extremely vexing for ordinary Kuwaitis, who regard the question as a “zero-sum game,” reinforcing the dichotomy between citizens and non-citizens and thereby making the status of Kuwaiti citizen all the more enviable. Finally, cast as Iraqis, the biduns have been culturally stigmatised while the southern Iraqi cultural influence on Kuwaiti society has been completely denied. The bidun issue takes place against the backdrop of an already-divided Kuwaiti society in which Bedouin culture has not been positively valued. In the aforementioned article, Farah al-Nakib demonstrates that the badu stereotype is the tangible result of public policies towards housing, education, and health services, as well as equal opportunity in employment. As one bidun commented,35 there has been an erasure of the Bedouin identity: for instance, Kuwaitis cannot wear the shmakh (the chequered headdress) during tv broadcasts. The biduns are at a greater disadvantage since they are not from the same tribes as the majority of the Kuwaiti badu; they belong to tribes of mixed sectarian composition as well as to the so-called “Northern tribes,” which are in national terms Iraqi. The sectarian mix of the tribes to which they originally belonged has furthermore been used to cast them as Shiʿites. As a result, the biduns have been forced to hide all their Iraqi cultural aspects, starting with the local Iraqi dialect.36

The Emergence of a Bidun Movement: From Public Meetings to Street Demonstrations

The First Organised Committees for Bidun Issues The first attempt at organising a consistent platform to denounce state policies towards the biduns emanated from Kuwaiti citizens themselves who were ashamed of their treatment.37 In a context in which mainstream Kuwaiti public opinion has been hostile to the biduns, depicting them as tricksters, the initiative came from a very small cultural, social, and intellectual elite who had been 34

35 36 37

As an example, a bidun who tried to seek Egyptian nationality in order to regularise his situation was forced to confess to fraud (that is, perjury, considered a crime) when the Egyptian Embassy denied having him on its citizens’ list. Interview with a bidun lawyer, Rashid al-Anezi, December 13, 2005. Interview, Kuwait, April 25, 2014. Another example is the traditional southern-Iraqi dance, the husa – the object of mockery on YouTube and derogatory comments on the Internet. Interview with Sheikha Fawzia, the founder of the Popular Committee, April 28, 2014.

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exposed to international influences and who had enough influence of their own to speak out.38 One of the daughters of Emir Jaber (1977–2006), Sheikha Awrad, another female member of the royal family, the human rights lawyer Sheikha Fawzia bint Salim al-Sabah, and several scholars (including Ghanim al-Najjar) and politicians (for example, Hassan al-Jawhar) created the Popular Committee for Bidun Issues in 2006. Their aim was to raise awareness of the situation of the biduns and clear their reputation, which had been sullied by government-disseminated accusations of treachery during the Iraqi invasion. This Popular Committee’s main activity was holding public meetings at prestigious historic clubs in Kuwait, such as the Graduates’ Society and the Kuwait Bar Association, places that traditionally form a political counterweight to the royal family’s rule. However, as the heartland of the Kuwaiti hadhar culture and considered the foundation of the modern state of Kuwait, such associations had also been rather distrustful of others who wanted to become Kuwaiti citizens.39 These meetings thus had the purpose of “changing mentalities,” instructing a Kuwaiti public that was very seldom exposed to the presence of the biduns, and making it aware of the country’s peripheries where they were “invisible” to those living in central districts.40 They offered the biduns a platform from which to present their own narratives and life stories in order to counter the official stigmatising propaganda. On November 4, 2006, the Popular Committee provided an unprecedented opportunity for silenced biduns to speak out: along with the Kuwait Society for Human Rights, it organised an event called “The Biduns Talk” in the lecture theatre of the Kuwait Bar Association. In order to redress the subsequent accusation of disloyalty, the Popular Committee also organised a “Day of the Bidun Martyr” on February 12, 2007, which commemorated those biduns who had died while serving in the armed forces. The impact of these activities, along with meetings held in front of the parliament building in the centre of Kuwait City, was important: the Popular Committee obtained public funds to establish two charity 38 39

40

Most of them were hadhar, stemming from old Kuwaiti families. The clubs in Kuwait have historically played a role as a counterweight to the royal family’s power. For instance, in the early days of Kuwait’s independence they exerted pressure for a constitution and parliamentary elections to be granted. See Fatiha Dazi Héni, “Coups de theatre,” 282. In an interview, Hassan al-Jawhar, one of the founding members of the Popular Committee, stated, “I said at the meeting of the Popular Committee in a big tent in Jahra where we invited Khudhair al-Anazi: ‘we need to move the bidun issue from the peripheral areas to the centre’ (min al-manatiq al-kharijiyya ila al-manatiq al-dakhiliyya).” After this conference, the next one was held in the capital city, with Dr. Ghanim al-Najjar. It was a considered a “breakthrough.” Interview with the author, Kuwait, April 29, 2014.

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­organisations for biduns, concerning health and education, with a yearly budget of kd 4 million.41 The activities of the Popular Committee constituted the first phase of the organisation of the bidun movement – a period in which claims for bidun rights were formulated and voiced by Kuwaitis. After 2008, the bidun movement was taken over by biduns themselves. Most of them had worked with the Popular Committee but they then started to organise themselves as political subjects. To break with what they felt was a paternalist approach, bidun members of the Popular Committee formed bidun-run (and unregistered) societies. In February 2008, twelve biduns founded the Kuwaiti Biduns’ Gathering (al-Tajammuʿ al Kuwaitiyyun al-Bidun), with the aim of alleviating the biduns’ suffering and demanding the recovery of human rights for all biduns, while leaving the issue of their naturalisation for later.42 In May 2008 another bidun organisation, the Kuwaiti Biduns’ Committee (Lajnat al-Kuwaitiyyun al-Bidun), emerged, with the aim of securing naturalisation or civil rights for those biduns who were best placed to obtain them. While both these organisations emphasised their Kuwaiti character in their titles, they acknowledged their differences through their tactics. Like the Gathering, the Committee was composed of biduns with some sort of advocacy experience as event organisers, lobbyists of Kuwaiti MPs, or managers of webpages. The 2011 Protest Movement: A New Repertoire of Actions 2011 marked an important rupture in the established order and practices of the bidun struggle. On February 18, 2011, a week after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and just a few days after the Bahraini and Libyan uprisings, biduns also took to the streets to demand basic rights and their naturalisation, transferring their struggle to their own territory in the Kuwaiti periphery: Tayma in the oasis of Jahra, where most of them live.43 Just as border areas are locations of contestation that reveal political agency,44 so the bidun “popular housing” (buyut shaʿbiyya) areas also provided destitute spaces for politicisation and

41

42 43 44

Claire Beaugrand, “Statelessness and Transnationalism in Northern Arabia: Biduns and State Building in Kuwait, 1959–2009” (PhD diss., London School of Economics and ­Political Science, 2011) 169–71. One founder of the Kuwaiti Biduns’ Gathering recalled: “The problem is that the face of the Popular Committee was only Kuwaitis,” interview with the author, Kuwait, April 27 2014. Claire Beaugrand, “Urban Margins in Kuwait and Bahrain: Decay, Dispossession and ­Politicization,” City 18 (2014): 737–40. Heather L. Johnson, Borders, Asylum and Global Non-Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

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the performance of transgressive acts.45 At the end of the Friday prayer in the Shaʿbi Mosque46 that borders the exclusively buyut shaʿbiyya area, a handful of politically-aware biduns gathered, soon joined by a hundred more, demanding a solution to their legal status. Their mobilisation and protests lasted for three consecutive days, and was met with forceful crowd-control measures – i.e., water cannon and tear gas. February 18 was the first instance of a spontaneous street demonstration. Only one earlier occurrence of protest in the bidun areas has ever been mentioned; in 1996, the bidun of Ahmadi protested in front of the Kuwaiti trade union after the koc housing authorities ordered the biduns to return their lowincome accommodation. The incident ended with the authorities rescinding the order.47 Nobody had foreseen the 2011 bidun uprising, and it was considered to have been spontaneous even though the government later started to search for ringleaders in Kuwait and among the most vocal political exiles in London. According to interviewees, the mobilisation had been called for via social media; neither the Kuwaiti Biduns’ Gathering nor the Kuwaiti B ­ iduns’ Committee acknowledged calling for the protest, although its members and followers recognised that they had participated in it. Two major changes in this bidun protest movement are worth noting: the first concerns the sociology of participants while the second involves a reorientation of the movement. Firstly, in contrast to the members of the organised movements, who had advocacy skills, the majority of the people who gathered at the exit of the Shaʿbi Mosque in 2011 were male, young and middle-aged ­biduns from the second and third generations. They chanted various slogans such as: “Bidun until when?”; “Kuwaitis! Kuwaitis!”; “Death rather than humiliation”; “Freedom”; “Dignity”; and “When the people want to live” (Iza al shaʿb yuman arada al-hayat), the last verse of the Tunisian national anthem.48 These particular biduns had little education, since most of them would have reached the age of secondary schooling in the 1990s–2000s when access to public schools was gradually denied to them. Secondly, the target of the biduns’ protest messages shifted from Kuwaiti public opinion towards the government, which now became the object of defiant actions. In the weeks following the February 18, 2011 protest the biduns offered a gesture of goodwill to Kuwaiti public opinion and organised a 45 46 47

48

Isin and Rygiel, “Abject Spaces,” 183. The name of the mosque refers to the Imam Shaʿbi, from the early times of Islam. Interview with a bidun, April 22, 2014, Ahmadi. “This was a circumscribed event. Since it involved the first generation of biduns who built the country, the government felt some compassion” Interview with the author, Tayma, April 22, 2014.

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­ assive campaign of blood donation to the Kuwaiti blood bank, the “Friday of m Blood Donation,” and handed out fresh flowers during a “Flowers Day.” While, on July 19, 2011, biduns organised the release of white balloons in Jahra, this approach lost momentum as it failed to attract attention at a time when Kuwaitis became more and more preoccupied with their own anti-corruption campaign against the prime minister.49 The bidun protest regained momentum in December 2011 with landmark dates such as the “Day of Non-violence” (2 October), the “Human Rights Day” (10 December), and the “Day of Dignity” (yawm al-karama) on 19 December. With the anniversary of the first demonstration approaching, “protests were held every week.”50 According to a bidun activist, “the number of protesters reached thousands, which is a high proportion compared to the total number [of biduns].”51 At the beginning of 2012, in an attempt to cool things down, the Ministry of the Interior issued a statement saying that it would not authorise the continuation of public demonstrations. On February 13, 2012, biduns defied the ban and went ahead with their scheduled protest, which was eventually repressed by Special Security Forces. As “illegal residents” the biduns are not allowed to organise or even ­demonstrate – a right that, according to the 1979 Law on Public Gathering, is also denied to foreigners. However, in a context in which Kuwaiti citizens also called for unprecedented protest marches in the centre of Kuwait City, the biduns enacted and performed this right in a mimetic way that no other foreign community would have dared. More than an awareness-raising campaign to seek support from amongst the citizens, this sustained demonstration campaign, at a time when citizens’ street protests led to the fall of the prime minister (November 28, 2011), constituted a clear gesture of political contestation. As a result, the entire leadership of the two bidun activist groups of the Gathering and the Committee who took part in the banned demonstration was arrested before later being released on bail. Although the groups were unregistered, their leaders were fairly well-known and had become public figures. However, due to persecution the Kuwaiti Biduns’ Gathering lost a third of its founding members, who sought asylum abroad. Moreover, on February 19, 2012 three Kuwaiti nationals who were present at the prohibited demonstrations were also arrested. One was a founder of a new all-female Kuwaiti organisation created in June 2012 and named Group 29 in reference to Article 29 of the 1962 constitution, which states, “All people are equal in human dignity, and in public rights and duties before the law, without 49 Interview with Abdul Hakim al-Fadhli, bidun activist, April 25, 2014. 50 Interview with a bidun activist, Kuwait, April 19, 2014. 51 Ibid.

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distinction as to race, origin, language or religion.” This group seeks practical and tangible solutions to the position of the biduns through their piecemeal integration into society, as it is convinced that wholesale “naturalisation is not going to happen.”52 For instance, in 2012, Group 29 successfully led a campaign for bidun admission to Kuwait University and lobbied the government for the state recognition of stateless people during a conference in April 2013. In this way, it hoped to force the state to issue official identification papers for the biduns, which, according to Group 29, has still not been done for those who are not registered with the Central System. A further consequence of the crackdown on the pre-2011 bidun movement was the arising of a new generation of bidun activists that displayed greater charisma than before and who did not hesitate to continue taking to the street, being arrested, and contesting judicial decisions – or, in other words, to break and brave the bans. A new informal group of bidun youths, calling itself ­Muwatinun (Citizens) emerged in June 2013 from the void left by the repression of February 2012. The members of the movement, the two Abdul Hakim al-Fadhlis and Ahmad Attiah,53 are biduns of a generation born in the second half of the 1970s who do not have experience in either advocacy or activism. Nonetheless, they are inspiring and are able to articulate a new discourse on citizenship, do not hesitate to tour bidun areas, to convince and give advice, and are fearless of the government.54

Biduns and Alternative Forms of Understanding Citizenship

Undeniably, the biduns have not achieved their goals of outright naturalisation and the recognition of their full rights. On March 6, 2011, the Council of Ministers promulgated Decision No. 409/2011, which granted them “eleven ­facilities” – a set of civil and human rights, including access to health and 52 53

54

Interview with Sheikha al-Muhareb, Group 29, Kuwait, April 16, 2014. The two Abdul Hakim al-Fadhlis hold the same name: both were born in 1976, one ­(referred to as Doctor Abdul Hakim) is a dentist and studied in the Ukraine, while the other studied Automotive Engineering in a local institute for industry and benefited from ­Volvo’s employer-training programme. Dr. Abdul Hakim al-Fadhli was arrested and detained during the early stages of the protest in February 2011 as he was suspected of being the initiator of a Facebook call to demonstrate. Interview, Kuwait, April 25, 2014. For instance, Abdul Hakim al-Fadhli led the campaigns (entitled sakhr al-watan – “Cry of the nation” – or katatib al-bidun – Biduns’ Schools) for the teaching of bidun children, with sit-ins in front of the Ministry of Education and, together with Group 29, for university admission for bidun students.

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e­ ducational services (under certain conditions of registration), and the issuing of birth, marriage, divorce, and death certificates, as well as driving licences. Yet although the decision implemented by the Central System gradually and ­selectively reversed the state of non-recognition, it still considers biduns “illegal residents,” and their access to such services remains dependent on the possession of cards issued by the Central System. Furthermore, the Central System divided the biduns into three categories: 34,000 were deemed eligible to receive nationality and could hold a green card, valid for five years. Another 8,000 received a red card showing that they are disqualified from naturalisation because they have criminal records or hold documents dating only up to 1980. Finally, the remaining biduns received a three-year yellow card and were requested to come forward and regularise their status on the basis of their foreign nationality. To add to the complexity, the Ministry of the Interior made an announcement on November 9, 2014 stating that biduns would be granted “special application forms for Comoros’ economic citizenship,” which would help them regularise their status as Comorian citizens – i.e., that they would become foreign residents in the emirate and be given free residency permits.55 Yet, at the same time, the protest movement initiated in 2011 resulted in the broadening of the debate on rights that was initiated by Kuwaiti human-rights activists in the mid-2000s through the creation of new Kuwaiti organisations or forms of activism and the questioning of the meaning of national belonging, as biduns articulated a completely different vision. Several scholars of citizenship studies have argued that citizenship, as an evolutive rather than fixed concept, can be interpreted in a way that accommodates actors who, although unrecognised as such, constitute themselves as political and legal subjects through concrete acts of claiming their rights. This is the meaning of the concept of “acts of citizenship.” Engin Isin and Greg Nielsen suggest that to investigate citizenship in a way that is irreducible to either status or practice, while still valuing this distinction, requires a focus on those acts when, regardless of status and substance, subjects constitute themselves as citizens or, better still, as those to whom the right to have rights is due. But the focus shifts from subjects as such to acts (or deeds) that produce such subjects.56 55

56

See the article from the newspaper al-Jarida by Mohamed al-Sharhan: “Al-Jarrah to al -Jarida: biduns to the Comoros islands,” http://m.aljarida.com/pages/news_more/20126 93535 (accessed July 9, 2015). Isin and Nielsen, Acts of Citizenship, 2.

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Yet more often than not this approach has been applied to societies where rights are granted rather than favours bestowed, particularly in the context of the struggles of undocumented people in the West. The question is: how to assess the impact of the biduns’ actions, which, although falling short of bringing them out of illegality, turned them nevertheless into political subjects? In their struggle, biduns performed some acts through which they articulated political subjectivities to claim rights that they were not entitled to exercise. The first of these was the right to demonstrate, prohibited for foreigners in Kuwait and a fortiori for the “illegal” foreigners that the biduns represent in the eyes of the state. As a result of the bidun protest, Kuwaiti lawyers demanded that the Constitutional Court clarify whether biduns were allowed to demonstrate;57 they obtained a mitigated judgement that did not positively assert the right to demonstrate but that emphasised the absence of sentences stipulated in the 1979 law regulating demonstrations.58 Secondly, the biduns used new juridical means unavailable to them before: their leaders were sent to jail and had to face courts59 and, in an act of defiance against the inability to make claims, Abdul Hakim al-Fadhli led a 47-day hunger strike.60 These acts of resorting to the judicial system disrupt the way in which the Central System tries to prevent the biduns from having contacts with the rest of the public administration.61 In this way, the biduns force the state to recognise them and 57

58

59

60 61

Article 44 of the 1962 Constitution states that, “Public meetings, processions and gatherings shall be permitted in accordance with the conditions and manner specified by law, provided that their purpose and means are peaceful and not contrary to morals.” For want of the exact judgement, this information is based on two interviews that brought it to my attention: interview with Group 29, April 16, 2014 and with a Kuwaiti lawyer, ­Kuwait, April 28, 2014. In October 2012, for instance, the protest led to at least 25 arrests. See Amnesty International, “Urgent Action: Bidun Arrested After Peaceful Protests.” www.amnestyusa.org/ sites/default/files/uaa30712.pdf (accessed July 9, 2015). Interview, Kuwait, April 18, 2014. The Central System has greater powers than the previous committees from which it inherited the bidun files, which were affiliated with the Ministry of the Interior. The head of the Central System has ministerial rank and the agency liaises with all the concerned ministries. “Under Article 2 of the decree establishing the Central System, this agency may take all executive measures to resolve the status of this class. In turn, the agency is in constant, active contact with all government bodies, agencies, public institutions, and competent security bodies, which provide the Central System with the data and information it needs, derived from these bodies’ records and official files. These files indicate the true nationality of the person claiming to belong to this class.” Government of Kuwait’s letter, “Report on the Human Rights Watch Report and Response to its Questions and Inquiries,” 6 – further to the June 13, 2011 Human Rights Watch publication, “Prisoners of the

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acquire the status of legal subjects, moving from a position where they were neither subjects nor objects of the Kuwaiti laws. Some biduns now claim that they are “not afraid to go to ministries or to court” or “to cast a complaint at the local police station.”62 In a sense, the biduns’ accumulation of security blocks (or flags) during the demonstrations defied the classifying logic of the Central System: in the words of one of them, “the holding power of the first [bidun] generation has eroded: now everybody is security flagged.”63 This leads us to the characteristics put forward by Isin for investigating acts of citizenship:64 by enacting the right to protest in the deprived space of popular housing – and, in particular, on the wasteland adjacent to the Shaʿbi Mosque, which they renamed “Freedom Square” – biduns created both the novelty of an event that could be replicated and a site dedicated to contestation. The bidun protest also intertwined different legal scales and attempted to shift their boundaries: as demonstrated before, the biduns’ legal interaction is almost always handled by the Central System. Kuwaiti lawyers and activists have tried to break this monopoly by making the biduns subject to national law (in the case of the Constitutional Court seizure) or international law (in the case of the status of statelessness). The new strategy of the biduns is to place themselves more and more at the level of natural law. Having seized for themselves the right to demonstrate, the protesters claimed universal values such as dignity, freedom, and equality in order to counter the systematic discrimination from which they suffer. The leaders of the Muwatinun resent how Kuwaitis interact with international organisations, as they pay lip-service to human-rights “language” in order to satisfy their international interlocutors while not jeopardising the interests of the government.65 “We operate underground, as intellectuals,” states Dr. Abdul Hakim al-Fadhli.66 The claims of Muwatinun are non-negotiable: they demand fully-fledged naturalisation for all biduns – apart from those who broke the united struggle and went to solve their own cases by purchasing faked p ­ assports

62 63 64 65

66

Past, Kuwaiti Bidun and the Burden of Statelessness.” www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/ reports/Response%20of%20the%20Kuwaiti%20Government%20to%20HRW_0.pdf (accessed July 9, 2015). Participant observation in Jahra, April 22, 2014. Interview in Ahmadi, April 22, 2014. Isin “Enacting,” 131–34. Interview with Mona Kareem, a bidun who sought asylum in the us where she is studying, January 15, 2014. She is a great source of inspiration for the biduns who remained trapped in Kuwait, and for their movement. Interview, Kuwait, April 18, 2014.

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in the 2000s. Muwatinun members seek support from foreign activists and articulate a new discourse that they know signifies a complete rupture with the prevailing conception of citizenship in Kuwait. According to Dr. Abdul Hakim al-Fadhli, who is multilingual and possesses a dentistry diploma, “nationality is different from identity. I don’t need a document from the state to ascertain my identity; your real identity is your capabilities. Education is the element that will subvert the given order/hierarchy.”67 This new conception of citizenship breaks with passive citizenship practices like voting or participating in the processes of wealth allocation, as it asserts itself outside the multiple networks of authority and patronage prevailing in Kuwait. The few educated bidun activists debate how to conceive of citizenship. They criticise, for instance, those biduns who, at the outset of the protests, exhibited portraits of the emir and symbols of the emirate in order to prove their loyalty and counteract the suspicion that they were foreigners. For them, this illustrates the lack of multicultural understanding of citizenship interiorised by the biduns themselves, who feel that despite their most radical claims to outright naturalisation they have to emulate hadhar Kuwaitis – look like them, behave like them, and talk like them; to be more Najdi than Iraqi. Indeed, the internalisation of a stigmatised origin from northern Arabia or southern Iraq is still so powerful that it leaves no room for diversity of origin in the national identity. Conclusion As in the cases of sans-papiers or sinpapeles,68 this article has shown how the community of biduns, excluded from all forms of political belonging in Kuwait, has devised alternative forms of making claims on the Kuwaiti polity through its acts – and, in the process, has constituted itself as being political. Yet, while in instances of migration regimes in Europe protests have usually created the conditions for regularisation, in the case of the biduns there has been almost no qualitative change in the way in which the government has handled them as a separate category of abjects who are neither subjects nor objects of the law. Worse, with regard to their quest for recognition as belonging to the country, Kuwait announced on November 8, 2014, as part of a broader regional trend, its intention to grant the biduns Comorian economic citizenship, following in the footsteps of the United Arab Emirates. Yet, in the process by which biduns have constituted themselves as political beings, the new generation has 67 68

Interview, Kuwait, April 18, 2014. Barbero, “Expanding Acts,” 533; McNevin, “Political Belonging,” 137.

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travelled some distance with the paternalist approach that had greatly helped raise general awareness of their plight by mobilising support for their cause. But this effort reached its limits when Kuwaitis became preoccupied with their own political struggle. Reflecting a trend in Kuwait of the erosion of the role of clientist intermediaries and the increased popularity of acts of disobedience, the new generation has broken with their elders who held them back and has become more vocal, more confrontational, and more creative in the way in which it imagines itself as a collective. It has become more independent in its struggle by adopting new sites of contestation, using the popular housing sites as symbols of its struggle, and by adopting new, daring modes of action that put people and bodies at risk. Bibliography Balibar, Etienne, Monique Chemillier-Gendreau, Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux, and ­Emmanuel Terray. Sans papiers: l’archaïsme fatal. Paris: La Découverte, 1999. Barbero, Iker. “Expanding Acts of Citizenship: The Struggles of Sinpapeles Migrants.” Social & Legal Studies 21 (2012): 529–47. Barbero, Iker “Orientalising Citizenship: The Legitimation of Immigration Regimes in the European Union.” Citizenship Studies 16 (2012): 751–68. Barron, Pierre, Anne Bory, Sébastien Chauvin, Nicolas Jounin, and Lucie Tourette. On bosse ici, on reste ici. La grève des sans-papiers: une aventure inédite. Paris: La Découverte, 2011. Beaugrand, Claire. “Statelessness and Transnationalism in Northern Arabia: Biduns and State Building in Kuwait, 1959–2009.” PhD diss., London School of Economics and Political Science, 2011. Beaugrand, Claire “Urban Margins in Kuwait and Bahrain: Decay, Dispossession and Politicization.” City 18 (2014): 735–45. Crystal, Jill. Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Crystal, Jill. Kuwait: The Transformation of an Oil State. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1992. Dazi Héni, Fatiha. “Coups de theatre à Koweït-City.” Outre-Terre 1 (14) (2006): 281–94. Al-Fahed, Muhammad. “An Historical Analysis of Police in Kuwait: Prospects for the Future.” PhD diss., University of Exeter, 1989. Isin, Engin F. Citizens without Frontiers. London-New York: Continuum, 2012. Isin, Engin F., and Greg M. Nielsen. Acts of Citizenship. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

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Isin, Engin F., and Kim Rygiel. “Abject Spaces: Frontiers, Zones and Camps.” In The Logics of Biopower and the War on Terror: Living, Dying, Surviving, edited by Elizabeth Dauphinee and Cristina Masters, 181–203. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Johnson, Heather L. Borders, Asylum and Global Non-Citizenship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Koopmans, Ruud, Paul Statham, Marco Giuni, and Florence Passy. Contested ­Citizenship. Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Longva, Anh Nga. “Citizenship in the Gulf States: Conceptualization and Practice.” In Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications, edited by Nils Butenschøn, Uri Davis, and Manuel Hassassian, 179–97. Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Longva, Anh Nga “Neither Autocracy nor Democracy but Ethnocracy: Citizens, Expatriates and the Socio-Political System in Kuwait.” In Monarchies and Nations: ­Globalisation and Identity in the Arab States of the Gulf, edited by Paul Dresch and James Piscatori, 114–35. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. McNevin, Anne. “Political Belonging in a Neoliberal Era: The struggle of the Sans-­ Papiers.” Citizenship Studies 10 (2006): 135–51. McNevin, Anne “Undocumented Citizens? Shifting Grounds of Citizenship in Los Angeles.” In Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement, edited by Peter Nyers and Kim Rygiel, 165–83. New York: Routledge, 2011. Nakash, Yitzhak. “The Conversion of Iraq’s Tribes to Shiʾism.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 26 (1994): 443–63. Al-Nakib, Farah. “Revisiting Hadhar and Badu in Kuwait: Citizenship, Housing and the Construction of a Dichotomy.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (2014): 5–30. Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Nyers, Peter. “The Regularization of Non-Status Immigrants in Canada: Limits and Prospects.” Canadian Review of Social Policy 55 (2005): 109–14. Plotkin-Boghardt, Lori. Kuwait Amid War, Peace and Revolution: 1979–1991 and New Challenges. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006. Al-Shehabi, Omar. “Histories of Migration to the Gulf.” In Transit States: Labour, Migration & Citizenship in the Gulf, edited by Abdulhadi Khalaf, Omar Al-Shehabi and Adam Hanieh, 3–38. London: Pluto Press, 2014. Siméant, Johanna. La cause des sans-papiers. Paris: Presses de Sciences-Po, 1998. Tétreault, Mary Ann. “A State of Two Minds: State, Cultures, Women, and Politics in Kuwait.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33 (2001): 203–20.

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Tétreault, Mary Ann, and Haya al-Mughni. “From Subjects to Citizens.” In Women, States, and Nationalism: At Home in the Nation?, edited by Sita Ranchod-Nilsson and Mary Ann Tétreault, 147–67. London: Routledge, 2003. Vora, Neah. Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2013.

chapter 19

Citizenship Studies and the Middle East Engin F. Isin

Citizenship Studies: Conventional and Critical

The contestation or struggle over the uses and meaning of citizenship have already indelibly marked the 21st century. Whether it is the question of the rights of migrants or refugees or undocumented migrants or Indigenous peoples or protesters, mothers, workers, queers, or prisoners and whether their rights are protected or guaranteed by national law, international law, supranational law or human rights law and indeed whether these rights should be conceived as citizenship rights at all are basic political questions of our century. Perhaps the 21st century should not be seen as exceptional. As James Tully says, “many of the central and most enduring struggles in the history of politics have taken place in and over the language of citizenship and the activities and institutions into which it is woven.”1 Yet, it is difficult to avoid the sense that we are experiencing a particularly intense period of struggles borne out of the reconfiguration of states, territories, sovereignties, and arrangements that undergird citizenship and render it as an object of both study and struggle.2 It is not surprising then to discover that although many struggles in and over the language of citizenship may have focused on Euro-American states we now find that such struggles are increasingly involving other places in Asia, Africa, and South 1 James Tully, On Global Citizenship: James Tully in Dialogue (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 3. 2 It is important to see citizenship as both a field of political struggle and a field of study. Knowledge on and about citizenship and its producers are inevitably woven into the fabric of power relations. There are different ways of seeing citizenship as a field of study but T.H. Marshall’s work is still considered a key contribution. Its Anglo-American perspective and Eurocentric historical outlook have been widely criticized. T.H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, ed. T.B. Bottomore (London: Pluto Press, 1992). See S. White, The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2009); John Clarke et al., Disputing Citizenship (Bristol: Policy Press, 2014); Martin Bulmer and Anthony M. Rees (eds), Citizenship Today: The Contemporary Relevance of T.H. Marshall (London: ucl Press, 1996). Also see Bryan S. Turner, Citizenship and Capitalism: The Debate over Reformism (London: Unwin, 1986); Bryan S. Turner, “Outline of a Theory of Citizenship,” Sociology 24 (1990): 189–217.

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America.3 The Middle East, or more precisely, struggles over citizenship in the Middle East, which is the subject of this volume, as both Roel Meijer and Nils Butenschøn have suggested, have accelerated with the Arab Uprisings and proceeded with the uncertain reconfigurations of the meaning and function of citizenship in the region.4 Throughout the world the struggles over citizenship have become incredibly diverse and it would be a folly to impose a particular characterisation on them. Nonetheless, as we witness and participate in these struggles, it is indeed possible to identify, in broad strokes, two approaches to understanding citizenship that have emerged. I will designate these as conventional and critical approaches not to argue that the latter displaces the former but to bring into sharper relief some differences that emerged in studying citizenship partly because of the complexities of citizenship in this century and partly because of the developments within the field of citizenship studies.5 Both conventional and critical approaches are needed to account for the complexities of the politics of citizenship. The conventional approaches typically begin with citizenship defined as rights, obligations, and belonging to the nation-state. Three rights (civil, political, and social) and three obligations (conscription, taxation, and franchise) often describe the relationships between citizens and states. Civil rights include the right to free speech, to conscience, and to dignity; political rights include voting and standing for office; and social rights include unemployment insurance, universal health care, and welfare provisions. All these rights are predicated on a fundamental right of equality ­before the law regardless of belief, background or origin that governs the relationship between ­citizens and their states.6 As regards obligations, although c­ onscription is rapidly disappearing as a citizenship obligation, taxation is still ­fundamental; voting, although declining, especially amongst the youth, remains vital. Conventional approaches to citizenship also draw our attention to the fact that 3 Engin F. Isin and Peter Nyers (eds), Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies (London: Routledge, 2014). 4 Roel Meijer, “Political Citizenship and Social Movements in the Arab World,” in Handbook of Political Citizenship and Social Movements, ed. Hein-Anton van der Heijden (London: ­Edward Elgar, 2014), 628–660; Nils A. Butenschøn, “Arab Citizen and the Arab State: The ‘Arab Spring’ as a C ­ ritical Juncture in Contemporary Arab Politics,” Democracy and Security 11 (2015): 111–28. 5 Tully characterizes these two approaches as civil and civic modes of citizenship: civil citizenship is understood as a set of rules originating in the West and disseminating from it and civic citizenship as diverse, multiple, negotiated, and local practices of political subjectivity. See Tully, On Global Citizenship, 7–10. My characterization of conventional and critical ­approaches to citizenship strongly resonates with his civil and civic modes of citizenship. 6 Charles Tilly, “A Primer on Citizenship,” Theory and Society 26 (1997): 599–602.

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these rights have been declining in Euro-American states and the future of civil, political and social rights remain contested and uncertain.7 For conventional approaches state-citizen relationship remains the key aspect of studying citizenship, which is considered as a membership of the nation-state. Critical approaches to studying citizenship make two basic interventions to the conventional approach to citizenship. First, critical approaches typically recognise new rights, such as sexual rights, cultural rights, and environmental rights, and study struggles over their institutionalisation (e.g., the struggles over same-sex marriage in the United States and Europe).8 The focus on rights maintains a more dynamic sense than in conventional approaches and struggle (agon or contestation) is a core concept for understanding rights. Second, critical approaches also recognise that increasingly, whether traditional (i.e., civil, political, social) or expanded (cultural, economic, environmental, sexual, transnational, and urban), rights and obligations are negotiated through supranational and international institutions such as the United Nations (e.g., Universal Declaration of Human Rights), the Council of Europe (e.g., ­European Court of Human Rights), and the European Union (e.g., European Court of Justice) as well as devolved institutions such as regional parliaments (e.g., Quebec or Scottish parliaments) and traditions of minority communities (e.g., applications of Shariʿa law) that question the assumption that citizenship is membership in only a nation-state.9 Critical approaches emphasize broader repertoires of rights that people draw upon in their struggles for citizenship rights. These struggles over rights are no longer contained (or for that matter 7 The literature of declining citizenship rights is voluminous and is often associated with the narrative of the decline of the welfare state and the rise of neoliberalism. See Bryan S. Turner, “The Erosion of Citizenship,” British Journal of Sociology 52 (2001): 189–209; ­Margaret R. Somers, Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 8 Umut Erel, Migrant Women Transforming Citizenship (Ashgate, 2009); Shane Phelan, Sexual Strangers: Gays, Lesbians, and Dilemmas of Citizenship (Philadelphia, pa: Temple University Press, 2001); Alex Latta, “Environmental Citizenship,” Alternatives Journal 33 (2007): 18–19; Toby Miller, Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age (Philadelphia, pa: Temple University Press, 2007). 9 Anne McNevin, Contesting Citizenship: Irregular Migrants and New Frontiers of the P­ olitical (Columbia University Press, 2011); Kim Rygiel, Globalizing Citizenship (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2010); Peter Nyers, “In Solitary, in Solidarity: Detainees, Hostages and Contesting the Anti-Policy of Detention,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 11 (2008): 333–49; Peter ­Nyers, ­“Abject Cosmopolitanism: The Politics of Protection in the Anti-Deportation Movement,” Third World Quarterly 24 (2003): 1069–93; Aoileann Ní Mhurchú, Ambiguous Citizenship in an Age of Global Migration (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014); Vicki Squire, The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

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containable) in a single sovereign jurisdiction. Critical approaches recognise that such struggles are waged through a multiplicity of legal and political orders and borders and that state-citizen relations are mediated through these multiple political forms. Taken together, these two interventions widen the focus from citizenship as already instituted arrangement with certain conventions to the figure of the citizen as a political subject at the center of struggles for rights who questions, if not breaks, these conventions. There are a number of theoretical considerations that follow this characterisation but in this chapter I will only and briefly focus on the figure of the citizen and the difference it may make in approaching citizenship in the Middle East.

The Figure of the Citizen

It would be fair to say that critical approaches to citizenship draw our attention to a performative understanding of rights and that the polities that give rise to and protect those rights are multiple and overlapping.10 If we begin thinking about citizenship as “a membership in the nation-state,” we are already approaching it in conventional ways. Rather, critical approaches often begin with the citizen as a historical and geographic figure – a figure that emerged in particular configurations and a dynamic, changing, and above all contested figure of politics that comes into being by performing politics.11 How does the figure of the citizen function in critical approaches to citizenship? We recognise that the figure of the citizen as it is inherited from the ­Euro-American tradition plays out two inherent, unresolved, and probably irresolvable, tensions: a tension between freedom and obedience and a tension between universalism and particularism. Étienne Balibar has, with exceptional clarity, drawn attention to both of these inherent tensions in the figure of the citizen. In what follows, I will present his basic argument in my own words to articulate the figure of the citizen as a performative figure. Balibar says that it is conventional political thought that created a divide between tradition and modernity where a subject to power (tradition) was replaced by a subject of power (modernity). To put it differently, if on the one side of the divide stood a subject of the sovereign (subject to power), on the other side stood the 10

11

Mary McThomas, Performing Citizenship: Undocumented Migrants in the United States (London: Routledge, 2016); Inbal Ofer and Tamar Groves (eds), Performing Citizenship: ­Social Movements across the Globe (London: Routledge, 2016). Clarke et al., Disputing Citizenship: 9–11.

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s­ overeign subject (subject of power). Conventional political theory hailed the arrival of the latter as the displacement of the former (i.e., the celebrated trope of “from subjects to citizens” or the overthrow of despotism). Critical political thought questions both the divide and displacement narratives. Instead, we see the political subject as a sedimentation of multiple forces, identifications, affiliations, and associations with a composite structure. Against the first narrative, the political subject is divided by these elements rather than by the binary dichotomies of tradition and modernity. Against the second narrative, the political subject is a site of multiple modes of power (sovereign, disciplinary, and control) that embodies composite dispositions (obedience, submission, and subversion).12 For critical approaches to citizenship as political subjectivity the familiar, all-too familiar, trope that traditional states had obedient subjects and that modern states have sovereign citizens needs interrogation. The question is, then, if we reject the sovereign citizen behind every act or deed, how can we understand the acting subject today composed of, as it were, these multiple identifications, powers, and dispositions? Balibar’s response to this question was, rather than continuing to oppose subjects to citizens, to contract them into one phrase: citizen-subjects.13 This has the advantage of reminding ourselves that we are working with a paradoxical figure. To begin, Balibar says, the very idea of the rights of the citizen institutes a historical figure that is not merely subject to power or the subject of power but embodies both.14 This move is quite significant: if being a ­subject to power requires obedience, being a subject of power requires disobedience. But these are not pure forms; rather, the citizen-subject embodies these as potentialities. Being a subject to power is marked by the citizen’s domination by the sovereign, and her rights derive from that which is given to her by the (patriarchal) sovereign. Being a subject of power means being an agent of power, even if this requires submission. Moreover, there is an important difference between obedience and submission. If being subject to power means obedience to the sovereign, then it requires domination as a mode of power. Whether this is total obedience or resistant obedience depends on the c­ ircumstances. 12 13 14

See Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (London: Routledge, 1997), 14–16. Étienne Balibar, “Citizen Subject,” in Who Comes after the Subject?, ed. Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy (London: Routledge, 1991), 38. Ibid., 46. Balibar puts it the following way: “The idea of the rights of the citizen, at the very moment of his emergence, thus institutes a historical figure that is no longer the subjectus, and not yet the subjectum.” I translate his “subjectus” as “subject to power” and “subjectum” as “subject of power.”

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By contrast, being a subject of power means submission to authority in whose formation the citizen participates and its potential subversion. What distinguishes the citizen from the subject is not that the citizen is a sovereign subject but that the citizen is this complex and composite subject of obedience, submission, and subversion. The birth of the citizen as a subject of power does not mean the disappearance of the subject as a subject to power. The citizensubject embodies these forms of power in which she is implicated, where obedience, submission, and subversion are not separate dispositions but are always-present potentialities. This shifts our attention to how subjects become citizens through various processes of subjectivation that involve relations between bodies and things that constitute people as subjects of power. If we focus on how people enact themselves as subjects of power, it involves investigating how people use language to describe themselves and their relations to others and how language summons them as speaking beings. To put it differently, it involves investigating how people do things with words and words with things to enact ­themselves.15 It also means addressing how people understand themselves as subjects of power when acting. For Balibar “the citizen’s becoming-a-subject takes the form of a dialectic, this is because there are necessary contradictions between founding a definition of the citizen and the contestations over it.”16 The citizen-subject that we inherit as a figure of politics is not only capable of being obedient but can also be simultaneously a submissive (to authority) and a subversive (of authority) figure. The essential insight here is that the figure of the citizen always carries within it the possibility and danger of the obedient subject of sovereign power. The citizen is a subject who submits to government in which she is implicated. This submission makes this figure a subject of subversion capable of questioning the terms of her own submission. To put it differently, the agency of the citizen appears in the gap between the capacity to submit to authority and yet the ability to act in dissent. This is not a sovereign subject in the mastery of her destiny but an embodied subject formed through multiple affiliations and of submission and subversion. The rights that the citizen holds are not the rights of an already-existing sovereign subject but the rights of a figure who submits to authority in the name of those rights and acts to call into question its terms. The second tension concerns its universalism against particularism. For the subject to become a citizen, the conditions must be equal for everyone. 15 16

I am drawing on Engin F. Isin and Evelyn S. Ruppert, Being Digital Citizens (London: ­ owman & Littlefield International, 2015). R Balibar, “Citizen Subject,” 53.

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To ­become a citizen is predicated on this equality. This equality is ostensibly universal. Balibar says that the citizen is a person who enjoys rights in completely realising being human and is free because being human is a universal condition for everyone.17 We would say the citizen is a subject who performs rights in realising being political because becoming political is a universal condition for everyone. There is, however, a contradiction here. It is that, historically speaking, while some subjects are considered capable of conducting themselves as citizens, such as white, male, propertied, able-bodied, Christian, and heterosexual beings, the opposites of each of those subject positions will remain subjects. This contradiction of the figure of the citizen can be expressed in another paradoxical phrase: universalism as particularism. We are all equal before the law in theory but differentiated in practice. From a critical perspective on citizenship, these tensions are constitutive of the struggles over the figure of the citizen. These tensions constitute the figure of the citizen as a subject of claims for rights. Each claim that a citizen articulates against an authority puts her under demands of that authority. If rights of citizenship come into being in law, the citizen comes into being through the performance of that law or performance of the right to claim rights. If the citizen comes into being performatively through rights, the imaginary of citizenship mobilises this figure of the citizen as a subversive subject. She is a subject of power whose acts of citizenship are simultaneously of submission and subversion. Acts of citizenship embody these two tensions. On the one hand, acts produce universalism because its subjects claim that everyone can act; on the other hand, and simultaneously, acts produce particularisms against those who are rendered unable or incapable to act or whose acts cannot be recognised. If making rights claims is performative, it follows that these rights are neither fixed nor guaranteed: they need to be repeatedly performed. Their coming into being and remaining effective requires performativity. The performative force of citizenship reminds us that the figure of the citizen has to be brought into being repeatedly through acts (repertoires, declarations, and proclamations) and conventions (rituals, customs, practices, traditions, laws, institutions, technologies, and protocols). Without the performance of rights, the figure of the citizen would merely exist in theory and would have no meaning in politics. So what is it that people do when making rights claims? We need to make two points here. First, performing citizenship both invokes and breaks conventions. Conventions are arrangements that embody norms, values, affects, laws, ideologies, and technologies. They involve agreement or 17

Ibid., 45.

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even consent – either deliberate or often implicit – that constitutes the logic of any custom, institution, opinion, ritual, and indeed law or embodies any accepted conduct. Since both the logic and embodiment of conventions are objects of agreement, performing these conventions also produces disagreement. Another way of saying this is that the performativity of conduct such as making rights claims often exceeds conventions. Second, while articulating a particular demand (for inclusion, recognition), performing citizenship enacts a universal right to claim rights. I have condensed a complex argument on the figure of the citizen into a few paragraphs but I hope that this sufficiently provides a glimpse of what is at stake in making a distinction between conventional and critical approaches to citizenship studies. If we start studying citizenship with the assumption of a given or self-evident institution that has acquired a stable shape over time (18th to 20th centuries) and space (Euro-America) we would be neglecting that this assumption is called into question by critical approaches. This is important because approaching citizenship in the Middle East, if we take an ostensibly stabilised Euro-American citizenship as our starting point, we are already participating in narratives of citizenship that constitute the figure of the citizen in conventional terms which are successive idealisations of Euro-American citizenship.18 As James Tully says, conventional approaches to citizenship often proceed with two assumptions. First, it is often assumed that “the modernization of the West into modern nation states with representative governments, a system of international law, the decolonization of European empires, supranational regime formations and the development of global civil society” is a universal and uniform process.19 Second, “the dependent modernization and citizenization of the non-West through colonization, the Mandate System, post-decolonization nation-building and global governance of 18

I am merely stating these arguments here but I have developed them elsewhere: Engin F. Isin, “Citizenship’s Empire,” in Citizenship after Orientalism: Transforming Political Theory, ed. Engin F. Isin (London: Palgrave, 2015), 261–81; Engin F. Isin, “Claiming European Citizenship,” in Enacting European Citizenship, ed. Engin F. Isin and Michael Saward (Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 2013), 19–46; Engin F. Isin, “Citizenship after Orientalism: Genealogical Investigations,” in Comparative Political Thought: Theorizing Practices, ed. Michael Freeden and Andrew Vincent (London: Routledge, 2013), 110–25; Engin F. Isin, Citizens without Frontiers (London: Bloomsbury, 2012); Engin F. Isin, “Citizens without Nations,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30 (2012): 450– 67; Engin F. Isin, “Citizenship in Flux: The Figure of the Activist Citizen,” Subjectivity 29 (2009): 367–88; Engin F. Isin, “The City as the Site of the Social,” in Recasting the Social in Citizenship, ed. Engin F. Isin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 261–280. 19 Tully, On Global Citizenship: 8.

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the former colonies” constitutes its diffusion moment.20 Tully sums up these two assumptions as “citizenisation” to indicate that a modular process of diffusion from Euro-America under its tutelage to the rest of the world where we look for the instances of the original. To put citizenisation differently, we really ought not to assume that the figure of the citizen has become a sovereign subject in Euro-America in modernity (as opposed to the complex and composite subject we described above) and it has spread elsewhere. And, if in fact it did spread, this was through imperial and colonial forms of rule such as tutelage and mandate.21

Citizenship in the Middle East

As Roel Meijer has recently illustrated a few years ago it would have been quite difficult to imagine a burgeoning field of citizenship studies in the Middle East – or the region of the world that came to be known as the Middle East designated by what came to be called the West.22 This highlights the challenge of deploying categories of political thought in the Middle East without the presence of imperialism and colonialism in how the region came to be defined and by whom.23 It is a region of the world that embodies several layers of imperial and colonial history. If we accept a broader conception of “empire” it can be said that the first empires were themselves born in the region. If we narrow our definition of “empire” then we can still enumerate several imperial histories and geographies involving the Roman Empire, Persian Empire, Ottoman Empire, and British, French, Spanish, and American empires. “The Middle East” is a region of the world deeply infused with histories and geographies of imperialism and colonialism. Yet, this complexity cannot fully explain why it would have been difficult to imagine citizenship studies and the Middle East. After all the Middle East is no more or less complex than how Europe or America came to be defined, each featuring various imperial histories. But the Middle East was defined by the 20 Ibid. 21 James Tully, “Lineages of Contemporary Imperialism,” in Lineages of Empire : The Historical Roots of British Imperial Thought, ed. Duncan Kelly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3–29; D.K. Fieldhouse, Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914–1958 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 22 Meijer, “Political Citizenship and Social Movements in the Arab World.” 23 Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

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victorious imperial powers at once simultaneously as the birthplace of ancient civilisations, including major religions such as Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, and its eventual backwardness or lack of progress. It is perhaps inadvertently that Bernard Lewis revealed this paradoxical perspective of the West on the Middle East with his What Went Wrong?24 That Eurocentric narrative, for so long and perhaps still dominant, designated the Middle East with a civilisational history but modern backwardness. Arguably, it is this paradox that hindered the emergence of citizenship studies in the Middle East since citizenship, along with democracy, nation, state, liberty, rights, and law would not have been indigenous to the region but always disseminated from the West. The Middle East – or the region of the world that came to be known as the Middle East designated by what came to be called the West – is indeed a poignant region to reject performing Tully’s citizenisation assumption. The subject of the Middle East and its relations to the West has been extensively debated but from the perspective of studying citizenship the most significant question is to what extent we can use theoretical, analytical, methodological tools from the field of citizenship studies especially developed over the last two decades for understanding the contemporary political developments in the Middle East? There are many vexed issues wrapped within that relatively straightforward-sounding question particularly if we remember, or perhaps more accurately, refuse to forget, that European colonial and imperial histories are part of contemporary Middle East. One of these issues is what we understand by the figure of the citizen. As I already emphasized above, one of the difficulties in the field over the last two decades has been to begin with a sovereign conception of the citizen as a member of a sovereign state. This can be witnessed often when scholars providing a presumably incontestable definition: “citizenship is …” The trouble is that any definition of citizenship already embodies its contested histories and any attempt to simplify it falls short of accounting for its complexities. When we combine this difficulty with the complexity of the region called the Middle East we can appreciate how difficult it is to study citizenship in the Middle East. We can declare that “citizenship” did not exist in the Middle East and that it was disseminated by Western nations or assume that “citizenship” has always existed in the Middle East. Either way, and in any other way that begins with citizenship as already given, the problem of interpretation remains acute. To put it differently, rather than approaching citizenship as given citizenship (in) law, a performative or critical approach would approach citizenship (in) 24

Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? The Conflict between Islam and the West in the Middle East (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002).

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practice through rituals, routines, and norms that people inhabit in their ordinary or extraordinary lives to understand how citizenship might be performed to bring “it” into being. A critical perspective would approach citizenship (in) acts to ascertain the extent to which individuals or groups take liberties and risks to perform citizenship. This is one of the reasons why I think conventional approaches to studying citizenship need to be expanded with the dynamics of the political subject – the figure of the citizen and its performativity – in the Middle East. I have discussed various aspects of this problem elsewhere and conducted a project on “citizenship after orientalism” to address specifically this problem.25 We have recently approached citizenship as an institution mediating rights between the subjects of politics and the polities to which these subjects belong or with which identify or affiliate.26 We argued that a minimalist definition such as this would provide for a space to think critically about the struggles over the meanings and functions of citizenship.27 The question is how do we approach citizenship outside the Euro-America critically without already holding a static definition?28 To return to Tully, he suggests approaching citizenship critically without the citizenisation assumption means to recognise citizenship as a multiplicity of practices anywhere in the world.29 For Tully “citizenship is not a status given by the institutions of the modern constitutional state and international law, but negotiated practices in which one becomes a citizen through participation.”30 So then, how do we identify multiplicity of negotiated practices through which people enact themselves as citizens? This suggests that approaching citizenship involves recognising that “citizenship” (as an institution mediating rights between the subjects of politics and the polities to which these subjects b­ elong 25

Engin F. Isin (ed.), Citizenship after Orientalism: Transforming Political Theory (London: Palgrave, 2015); Engin F. Isin (ed.), Citizenship after Orientalism: An Unfinished Project (London: Routledge, 2014); Engin F. Isin, “We, the Non-Europeans,” in Conflicting Humanities, ed. Rosi Braidotti and Paul Gilroy (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 229–44; Isin, “Citizenship after Orientalism: Genealogical Investigations”; Engin F. Isin, “Citizenship after Orientalism,” in Handbook of Citizenship Studies, ed. Engin F. Isin and Bryan S. Turner (London: Sage, 2002), 117–28. 26 Engin F. Isin and Peter Nyers, “Globalizing Citizenship Studies,” in Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies, ed. Engin F. Isin and Peter Nyers (London: Routledge, 2014), 1. 27 Ibid., 2–3. 28 Nils A. Butenschøn, Uri Davis, and Manuel S. Hassassian, Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications (Syracuse, n.y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000). 29 Tully, On Global Citizenship: 8–9. 30 Ibid., 9.

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or with which they identify or affiliate) exists at least in four distinct, irreducible yet overlapping forms. These are citizenship (in) law, citizenship (in) ­practice, citizenship (in) theory, and citizenship (in) acts. The importance of recognising the multiplicity of citizenship through these forms will be borne out by my argument that these forms are often discordant and incongruous: there are inevitable gaps between them. But these gaps provide really the urgent and pressing issues for research in citizenship studies. Citizenship (in) law exists in legislation, courts, constitutions, treaties, conventions, and declarations as rights. It is not only in modern states but also in early modern and earlier states that various laws specified the rights, liberties and duties of legal subjects and these inevitably shape conduct of subjects and the dividing line between legal and illegal. Citizenship (in) law designates not only rights and duties and legal and illegal conduct but also the subjects of this law and who are excluded from it. Whether it is by birth, descent, or residence many polities have inscribed citizenship (in) law separating citizens from noncitizens. Arguably, this is one of the fundamental functions of citizenship (in) law in that it simultaneously creates both citizen and non-citizen categories. The way in which I described citizenship (in) law depends on its incongruous relationship with citizenship (in) practice. People take up their citizenship (in) practice as rights in a variety of ways, mixing and matching different rights, making claims to new ones, grieving about the disappearance of others, and in the process traversing jurisdictions, borders and boundaries. It may be hard to accept it, especially if we like tidy and organised ideas, but people don’t bother much about the sources of their entitlement or claim making. To put it differently, citizenship (in) practice is a lot messier than citizenship (in) law. (Let’s not forget that it is messy in law too.) But this gap between citizenship (in) law and citizenship (in) practice gives it a vitality that it is impossible to study citizenship (in) law without documenting how it is observed, enforced, transgressed, subverted, or even perverted. Then citizenship also exists (in) theory: ideas, ideals, interpretations, explanations, contentions about what citizenship is and ought to be produce citizenship (in) theory, which never quite matches either citizenship (in) law or citizenship (in) practice. Citizenship (in) theory always falls short of describing what transpires in citizenship (in) practice and citizenship (in) law. The field of citizenship studies is only a part of citizenship (in) theory, which features broader political discourse than an institutionalized academic field. These political discourses involve public statements by activists, artists, authorities, bureaucrats, citizens, intellectuals, journalists, politicians, professionals, and all opinion makers who interpret citizenship in multiple ways. Citizenship (in) theory is neither reducible to nor can exhaust citizenship (in) law or on

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­citizenship (in) practice. The field of citizenship studies participates in citizenship (in) theory by developing theoretical, analytical and methodological tools with which to understand citizenship (in) law and citizenship (in) practice. There is much disagreement amongst scholars in the field as to the precise articulations of citizenship in both national and international laws and practices and this is largely due to the contentious and contested nature of citizenship. For these reasons it is impossible to approach citizenship with certainty as though its multiplicity of forms can ever overlap perfectly. To make matters even more complicated, I have argued that citizenship also exists in acts. Citizenship (in) acts symbolises the performative politics of citizenship: in and by making rights claims people constitute themselves as citizens without regard for any convention that may yet exist to authorize their act. Thus, citizenship (in) acts introduces rupture into both citizenship (in) law by transgressing or subverting it and citizenship (in) practice by breaking conventions. This has been a subject of studies that illustrated how people perform as citizens regardless whether they are designated as citizens or noncitizens.31 Citizenship (in) acts always occur in the gap between citizenship (in) law and citizenship (in) practice or between citizenship (in) theory and citizenship (in) practice. Citizenship (in) acts is irreducible to citizenship (in) practice for the latter involves habits and routines that the latter break or rupture. It is significant to recognise this element of rupture precisely because it gives us a valuable glimpse of a gap between how citizenship (in) law regulates subjects of rights and how citizenship (in) practice shapes and transforms citizenship (in) law. In a way, citizenship (in) acts enables fissures, conflicts, contradictions, dilemmas of becoming citizens (in) practice and (in) theory to get reflected in citizenship (in) law. Making these distinctions enables us to recognise that citizenship (in) law, citizenship (in) practice, citizenship (in) theory and citizenship (in) acts are essentially sites of political and social struggle through which people make 31

Nyers, “Abject Cosmopolitanism”; Ranu Basu, “Negotiating Acts of Citizenship in an Era of Neoliberal Reform: The Game of School Closures,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31 (2007): 109–27; Leah Bassel and Catherine Lloyd, “Rupture or Reproduction? ‘New’ Citizenship in France,” French Politics 9 (2011): 21–49; Iker Barbero, “Orientalising Citizenship: The Legitimation of Immigration Regimes in the European Union,” Citizenship Studies 16 (2012): 751–68; Michael Saward, “The Dynamics of European Citizenship: Enactment, Extension and Assertion,” Comparative European Politics 11 (2013): 49–69; Alessandra Marino, “‘The Cost of Dams’: Acts of Writing as Resistance in Postcolonial India,” Citizenship Studies 16 (2012): 705–19; Jonathan Darling, “Another Letter from the Home Office: Reading the Material Politics of Asylum,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32 (2014): 484–500.

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claims involving belonging, identity, inclusion, exclusion, and participation, influence, engagement, and so on. These claims always involve rights ranging from civil, political, and social rights to labor, sexual, cultural, environmental, consumer, and other rights. Citizenship (in) theory is both a participant and observer in these struggles and it is difficult to draw a line between these two types of involvement. So when we are talking about citizenship from within the field of citizenship studies as scholars we are presented with the paradoxes of being both observers and participants in these struggles over the meanings and functions of an institution that organizes, regulates, and distributes rights in contemporary polities and across them. This is especially important in approaching citizenship in the Middle East as it obligates us to ask ourselves as scholars as to what conception of citizenship we are performing. If I were to approach citizenship in the Middle East with these four interrelated and interwoven forms of its existence I think I would be avoiding the citizenisation assumption: that is, the burden of having to provide a definition of citizenship before investigating negotiated practices, making an investment in it, and then looking for its instantiation through absence or presence. The difficulties of citizenisation are evident in the debates over Arab Spring. The languages of interpretation widely oscillated across “revolutions,” “revolts,” “awakening,” “democratisation,” “freedom,” and so on.32 And yet, strangely, citizenship has been a rather quite (though not entirely absent) concept in these contemporary interpretations of these events in the Middle East. There are complex reasons for this. To begin, “citizenship” is not the most familiar term with which public discourse is conducted neither in the Middle East nor in fact in Euro-America. Often “rights” much more easily roll off the tongues of both interpreting and acting agents of events. This might change in the future but the political discourse on citizenship or citizenship (in) theory mostly exists in the language of rights. And rights involve multiple and overlapping legal orders ranging from national and international laws and treaties. But it also involves “citizenship” being absorbed into “democracy” as the dominant concept of interpretation.

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Valentine M. Moghadam, “What Is Democracy? Promises and Perils of the Arab Spring,” Current Sociology 61 (2013): 393–408; Meijer, “Political Citizenship and Social Movements in the Arab World”; Butenschøn, “Arab Citizen and the Arab State: The “Arab Spring” as a Critical Juncture in Contemporary Arab Politics”; Benoît Challand, “Citizenship against the Grain: Locating the Spirit of the Arab Uprisings in Times of Counterrevolution,” Constellations 20 (2015): 169–87.

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This problem in part owes its existence to Eurocentric understanding of the figure of the citizen. Citizenship (in) theory in its modern variety has always examined citizenship as a Western institution in the sense that it has either assumed that citizenship (in) law and citizenship (in) practice did not and could not exist in non-European societies, of which the Middle East societies would certainly constitute a prime example, or if it did only in forms that would have been taken from Europe as a derivative and transplanted institution. There are hard and soft versions of this assumption as well as manifest and latent versions. All these can be traced back to the very origins of social sciences and humanities in Europe and America and certainly the origins of modern citizenship (in) theory. These origins are implicated in colonialism, imperialism and orientalism. We have to remind ourselves that we are speaking about a region whose name was invented as a result of colonial and imperial struggles over it. We cannot extricate ourselves or the region from these histories. So the difficulty is when using the concept citizenship to interpret political developments in the Middle East remaining silent about this problem is really not an option. Even if a scholar considers it an act of defiance against orientalism and bypasses a discourse of absence or presence of citizenship in the Middle East, the question still remains whether it is an institution that’s disseminated to “oriental” societies or these societies also have authentic (though perhaps not necessarily indigenous) citizenships (in) law and citizenship (in) practice and if not citizenship (in) theory? These are some of the challenges of approaching politics in/of the Middle East from the perspective of citizenship. The chapters in this volume feature engrossing and telling examples of how we are responding to these challenges and the analytical tools we are developing. I hope this chapter provides a useful way to approach struggles over citizenship (in) theory against the background of struggles in citizenship (in) law and citizenship (in) practice and perhaps an invitation to consider citizenship (in) acts.

Challenges of Studying Citizenship in the Middle East

By distinguishing conventional and critical approaches to citizenship studies I have attempted to draw attention to the fact that many issues that seem settled as regards meanings and functions of citizenship as an institution are effectively contested and contestable issues. By highlighting the gaps amongst struggles over citizenship (in) theory, struggles in citizenship (in) law, citizenship (in) practice, and citizenship (in) acts, I have argued that the figure of

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the citizen is a political site where these contestations are taking place. When approached critically, meanings and functions of citizenship are much more varied and dynamic and belie attempts to stabilize its definition.33 By way of conclusion, let me recapitulate the challenges in studying citizenship in the Middle East as substantive questions of citizenship in general. I have experienced these challenges during my studies on the Islamic institution of waqf or trust especially during the 16th-19th centuries in Ottoman Empire and I will give examples where possible.34 The basic challenge is identifying who the subjects of citizenship are. This is a challenge, I think, because it involves determining what kind of a subject the citizen is: passive, active, giving, receiving, claiming, demanding, contracting, struggling, enjoying, suffering, and so on. We observe seemingly contradictory if not mutually exclusive modes of practicing agency in several studies on citizenship in the Middle East.35 Citizens appear in all these modes. Questions arise as to what extent subjects such as youth, women, migrants, and under more specific categories such as indigen, bidun, Sunni, Shiʿi, Salafi, and so on are included or excluded from citizenship.36 Who are the emerging subjects of citizenship in the Middle East and documenting the ways in which social agents, modes, and ascriptions are mobilised requires addressing the figure of the citizen as a complex figure. If indeed, various marginalised, dominated, oppressed, or subaltern political subjects such as the refugees, migrants, sans-papiers, youth and others are subjects of struggles over their rights and obligations in Euro-America, as James Sater illustrates, whose study concerns ­citizenship in Arab Gulf Monarchies, differentiated categories of citizenship also function 33 34

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Isin, “Citizenship in Flux: The Figure of the Activist Citizen.” Engin F. Isin, “Beneficence and Difference: Ottoman Awqaf and ‘Other’ Subjects,” in The Other Global City, ed. Shail Mayaram (London: Routledge, 2009), 35–53; Engin F. Isin, ­“Ottoman Awqaf, Turkish Modernization, and Citizenship,” in Remaking Turkey: Globalization, Alternative Modernities, and Democracy, ed. Emin Fuat Keyman (Lanham, md: Lexington Books, 2007), 3–15; Engin F. Isin and Alexandre Lefebvre, “The Gift of Law: Greek Euergetism and Ottoman Waqf,” European Journal of Social Theory 8 (2005), 5–23; Engin F. Isin, “Citizenship after Orientalism: Ottoman Citizenship,” in Citizenship in a Globalizing World: European Questions and Turkish Experiences, ed. Fuat Keyman and Ahmet Içduygu (London: Routledge, 2005), 31–51. Anver M. Emon, Religious Pluralism and Islamic Law: Dhimmis and Others in the Empire of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Rania Maktabi, “Female Citizenship in the Middle East: Comparing Family Law Reform in Morocco, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon,” Middle East Law and Governance 5 (2013): 280–307; Saba Mahmood, “Religious Freedom, the Minority Question, and Geopolitics in the Middle East,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 54 (2012): 418–46. Salwa Ismail, “The Syrian Uprising: Imagining and Performing the Nation,” Studies in ­Ethnicity and Nationalism 11 (2011): 538–49.

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for both domination and empowerment. Sater says how the relative disempowerment of migrant workers is related to the lack of civil and political rights that official citizenship holders enjoy is a struggle over the figure of the citizen.37 These dynamics are prevalent in Euro-American states as well albeit with different actors and power relations. Similarly, in my studies on Ottoman waqfs, I have realised how both benefactors and beneficiaries of waqf endowments encountered each other as citizens not in the sense of an existing citizenship (in) law but rights and obligations instituted through citizenship (in) practice that was performed by founding waqfs as citizenship (in) acts.38 Here rather than juxtaposing citizens to subjects, it is more effective to think of the contraction citizen-subject as a performative figure. This does not render the challenges of citizenship in Euro-American and Middle Eastern states identical but they involve theoretically and conceptually fundamentally similar problems. The second challenge, which is also broadly consistent with critical approaches to citizenship, is recognising that citizenship is an object of struggle itself. That citizenship is not given (but is taken) as a matter of political and social struggle and that these struggles often express themselves as claims and demands as the right to articulate rights.39 These struggles occur in all forms of citizenship – (in) law, (in) practice, (in) theory, and (in) acts – but also between and across them. The struggles over the idea or imaginary of citizenship are also struggles over how it is expressed in law. Many political struggles in the Middle East are, amongst other things, also struggles over rights to citizenship (i.e., rights to practice citizenship without fear of intimidation or persecution) as much as they are about citizenship rights (i.e., civil, political, and social rights). There is a recognition that xenophobia, homophobia, discrimination, marginalisation, oppression and domination render citizenship (in) practice far from citizenship (in) theory with its principle of universal equality of all citizens.40

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James N. Sater, “Citizenship and Migration in Arab Gulf Monarchies,” in Migration, Security, and Citizenship in the Middle East: New Perspectives, ed. Peter Seeberg and Zaid Eyadat (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 40. Engin F. Isin, “Ottoman Waqfs as Acts of Citizenship,” in Held in Trust: Waqf in the Muslim World, ed. Pascale Ghazaleh (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2011), 209–29. Mahmood, “Religious Freedom, the Minority Question, and Geopolitics in the Middle East”; Meijer, “Political Citizenship and Social Movements in the Arab World”; Larbi Sadiki, “The Search for Citizenship in Bin Ali’s Tunisia: Democracy Versus Unity,” Political studies 50 (2002): 497–513; Challand, “Citizenship against the Grain Locating the Spirit of the Arab Uprisings in Times of Counterrevolution.” Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, n.j.: Princeton University Press, 1990).

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Yet, the concept of struggle can often invoke repertoires that we are most familiar with such as street protests, demonstrations, marches, petitions, occupations and so on. Studying diverse and negotiated citizenship (in) practice, however, can also include less familiar repertoires. Everyday citizenship (in) practice can, for example, include waqf foundations where benefactors, especially women benefactors, literally make their way into performing citizenship as law-givers in the sense of being involved in drawing up waqf deeds and their legal requirements.41 So the challenge is always identifying and documenting struggles over rights and the ways in which these struggles accumulate and transmit effective practices for resistance and empowerment. The third challenge is often brought up in citizenship in the Middle East and it is the tension between individual and communal rights: or rights that are expressed and bestowed on the basis of individual versus communal ascriptive qualities. This is an extraordinarily complex theoretical and political challenge that would deserve a much longer discussion. Arguably, it is also one of the most fundamental questions of citizenship (in all its four forms) and can be traced back to at least 1776 and 1789 declarations that announce citizenship to be universal (humanity) and particular (nationality) at the same time – a paradox that we inherit. It is a paradox that brings histories of colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, slavery, and orientalism to bear on histories of citizenship and its dividing practices through inclusions and exclusions. It is significant to stress again that there is no reason to assume that this is an exceptional issue in citizenship studies of the Middle East.42 To assume that the Middle Eastern states are essentially marked by communal rights can be questioned by, for example, waqf endowments where the rights bestowed on benefactors to create them and the rights that accrue to their beneficiaries involved both individual and group or communal rights.43

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Engin F. Isin and Ebru Üstündağ, “Wills, Deeds, Acts: Women’s Civic Gift-Giving in ­Ottoman Istanbul,” Gender, Place and Culture 15 (2008): 519–32. It is important to remember that the debates over multiculturalism and recognition in the 1990s that still reverberate today under different terms were broadly speaking about the paradoxes of universalism and particularism of citizenship. Amy Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1994); Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1994), 25–74. Richard L.A. van Leeuwen, Waqfs and Urban Structures: The Case of Ottoman Damascus (Leiden: Brill, 1999); Miriam Hoexter, S N Eisenstadt, and Nehemia Levtzion, The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).

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The fourth challenge is a variation on the third but it has its own historical trajectory: sectarianism or tribalism. There has always been a fear about the threats posed to citizenship’s ostensible universalism by social groups ­identified as its “others.” This is not only in the Middle East but also in Europe, America, and Asia as witnessed by debates over citizenship and identity.44 The generic problem, regardless of ascriptive groups involved in the specific context, is how to reconcile power relations between dominant and dominated social groups. Again, this recalls extraordinarily complex theoretical and political issues but they are by no means unique in the Middle East. Arguably, the debates over multiculturalism, integration, identity and difference, diversity and cultural politics that permeate struggles over citizenship in Euro-­American states are quite fundamentally similar to the questions of sectarianism or tribalism though admittedly with different histories. The Middle East clearly involves colonial and imperial histories and it is within those histories that the generic problem of the relationship between dominant and dominated social groups and their citizenship claims are being addressed.45 The fifth challenge is the tension between religion and secularism. It is very difficult to address substantive rights in the Middle East without attending to the problems presented by individual versus group rights and universalism versus particularism as key elements of citizenship (in) theory. But, clearly religion complicates these even further. In studies on citizenship in the Middle East this is especially illustrated by how “religious” social groups such as Muslim Brotherhood, Salafis, Hezbollah or Hamas constitute various forms of citizenship by organizing social services through new waqf foundations.46 This is undoubtedly one of the most vexed issues concerning citizenship in the Middle East and yet strangely should also be approached from a broader perspective on the question of religion and secularism in genealogies of citizenship.47 44

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Geoffrey Brahm Levey, Secularism, Religion and Multicultural Citizenship (Cambridge University Press, 2008); Engin F. Isin and Patricia K. Wood, Citizenship and Identity ­(London: Sage, 1999). This issue has been widely debated as regards Max Weber’s conception of citizenship as an institution than enables individuals to be individuals rather than members of family, tribe or kin. See Bryan S. Turner, Weber and Islam: A Critical Study (Routledge, 1978). Samantha May, “God’s Land: Blurring the National and the Sacred in Waqf Territory,” ­Politics, Religion & Ideology 15 (2014): 421–41. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, ca: Stanford University Press, 2003); Bryan S. Turner, “Religion in a Post-Secular Society,” in The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion, ed. Bryan S. Turner (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 649–67.

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The ways in which citizenship (as an institution mediating rights between the subjects of politics and the polities to which these subjects belong or with which they identify or affiliate) has developed in the Middle East are not only related to how Euro-American citizenship (in) theory developed but also has been transformed in practice. Scholars who are now approaching the politics of the Middle East from the perspective of citizenship by documenting the gaps between citizenship (in) theory and citizenship (in) law, (in) practice and (in) acts, as the chapters of this volume attests, are simultaneously contributing to our understanding of political subjectivity in the Middle East as well as the changing politics of citizenship in Euro-American societies and states. This is perhaps an ambitious claim that I am making on behalf of those who are studying citizenship in the Middle East but that ambition arises from the burden of using the concept ‘citizenship’ and its paradoxical heritage. Acknowledgements I would like to express my thanks to Nils A. Butenschøn and Roel Meijer for inviting me to the conference where the chapters featured in this book were presented and for subsequently inviting me to contribute to this volume. The chapter has greatly benefitted from their generous and constructive comments on earlier drafts and the challenges they put to me on questions of citizenship in the Middle East. Bibliography Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Asad, Talal. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. Balibar, Étienne. “Citizen Subject.” In Who Comes after the Subject?, edited by Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor and Jean-Luc Nancy, 33–57. London: Routledge, 1991. Barbero, Iker. “Orientalising Citizenship: The Legitimation of Immigration Regimes in the European Union.” Citizenship Studies 16 (August 1, 2012 2012): 751–68. Bassel, Leah, and Catherine Lloyd. “Rupture or Reproduction? ‘New’ Citizenship in France.” French Politics (2011): 21–49. Basu, Ranu. “Negotiating Acts of Citizenship in an Era of Neoliberal Reform: The Game of School Closures.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31 (2007): 109–27.

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Bulmer, Martin, and Anthony M. Rees, eds. Citizenship Today: The Contemporary Relevance of T.H. Marshall. London: UCL Press, 1996. Butenschøn, Nils A. “Arab Citizen and the Arab State: The ‘Arab Spring’ as a Critical Juncture in Contemporary Arab Politics.” Democracy and Security 11 (2015): 111–28. Butenschøn, Nils A., Uri Davis, and Manuel S. Hassassian. Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. London: Routledge, 1997. Challand, Benoît. “Citizenship against the Grain: Locating the Spirit of the Arab Uprisings in Times of Counterrevolution.” Constellations 20 (2015): 169–87. Clarke, John, Kathleen M. Coll, Evelina Dagnino, and Catherine Neveu. Disputing Citizenship. Bristol: Policy Press, 2014. Darling, Jonathan. “Another Letter from the Home Office: Reading the Material Politics of Asylum.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32 (2014): 484–500. Emon, Anver M. Religious Pluralism and Islamic Law: Dhimmis and Others in the Empire of Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Erel, Umut. Migrant Women Transforming Citizenship. Ashgate, 2009. Fieldhouse, D.K. Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914–1958. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Gutmann, Amy (ed.). Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Hoexter, Miriam, S N Eisenstadt, and Nehemia Levtzion. The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Isin, Engin F. “Citizenship after Orientalism.” In Handbook of Citizenship Studies, edited by Engin F. Isin and Bryan S. Turner, 117–28. London: Sage, 2002. Isin, Engin F. “Citizenship after Orientalism: Ottoman Citizenship.” In Citizenship in a Globalizing World: European Questions and Turkish Experiences, edited by Fuat ­Keyman and Ahmet Içduygu, 31–51. London: Routledge, 2005. Isin, Engin F. “Ottoman Awqaf, Turkish Modernization, and Citizenship.” In Remaking Turkey: Globalization, Alternative Modernities, and Democracy, edited by Emin Fuat Keyman, 3–15. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007. Isin, Engin F. “The City as the Site of the Social.” In Recasting the Social in Citizenship, edited by Engin F. Isin, 261–280. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Isin, Engin F. “Theorizing Acts of Citizenship.” In Acts of Citizenship, edited by Engin F. Isin and Greg M. Nielsen, 15–43. London: Zed Books, 2008. Isin, Engin F. “Beneficence and Difference: Ottoman Awqaf and ‘Other’ Subjects.” In The Other Global City, edited by Shail Mayaram, 35–53. London: Routledge, 2009. Isin, Engin F. “Citizenship in Flux: The Figure of the Activist Citizen.” Subjectivity 29 (2009): 367–88.

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Isin, Engin F. “Ottoman Waqfs as Acts of Citizenship.” In Held in Trust: Waqf in the Muslim World, edited by Pascale Ghazaleh, 209–29. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2011. Isin, Engin F. Citizens without Frontiers. London: Bloomsbury, 2012. Isin, Engin F. “Citizens without Nations.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30 (2012): 450–67. Isin, Engin F. “Enacting Citizenship.” In Engin F. Isin, Citizens without Frontiers, 108–46. London: Bloomsbury, 2012. Isin, Engin F. “Citizenship after Orientalism: Genealogical Investigations.” In Comparative Political Thought: Theorizing Practices, edited by Michael Freeden and Andrew Vincent, 110–25. London: Routledge, 2013. Isin, Engin F. “Claiming European Citizenship.” In Enacting European Citizenship, edited by Engin F. Isin and Michael Saward, 19–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Isin, Engin F. (ed.). Citizenship after Orientalism: An Unfinished Project. London: Routledge, 2014. Isin, Engin F. (ed.). Citizenship after Orientalism: Transforming Political Theory. London: Palgrave, 2015. Isin, Engin F. “Citizenship’s Empire.” In Citizenship after Orientalism: Transforming Political Theory, edited by Engin F. Isin, 263–81. London: Palgrave, 2015. Isin, Engin F. “We, the Non-Europeans.” In Conflicting Humanities, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Paul Gilroy, 229–44. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Isin, Engin F., and Alexandre Lefebvre. “The Gift of Law: Greek Euergetism and ­Ottoman Waqf.” European Journal of Social Theory 8 (2005): 5–23. Isin, Engin F., and Greg M. Nielsen (eds). Acts of Citizenship. London: Zed Books, 2008. Isin, Engin F., and Peter Nyers. “Globalizing Citizenship Studies.” In Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies, edited by Engin F. Isin and Peter Nyers, 1–11. ­London: Routledge, 2014. Isin, Engin F., and Peter Nyers (eds). Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies. London: Routledge, 2014. Isin, Engin F., and Evelyn S. Ruppert. Being Digital Citizens. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2015. Isin, Engin F., and Michael Saward (eds). Enacting European Citizenship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Isin, Engin F., and Ebru Üstündağ. “Wills, Deeds, Acts: Women’s Civic Gift-Giving in Ottoman Istanbul.” Gender, Place and Culture 15 (2008): 519–32. Isin, Engin F., and Patricia K. Wood. Citizenship and Identity. London: Sage, 1999. Ismail, Salwa. “The Syrian Uprising: Imagining and Performing the Nation.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11 (2011): 538–49. Latta, Alex. “Environmental Citizenship.” Alternatives Journal 33 (2007): 18–19.

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Index ʿAbd al-Ghafour, Emad al-Din 355 Abd El-Fattah, Alaa 310 ʿAbd al-Fattah, Muhammad 354–5 ʿAbd al-Malik, Anwar 307 ʿAbd al-Wahhab, Muhammad 206 ʿAbdallah I (King) 181, 211–2, 218 ʿAbdallah ii (King) 186, 259 ʿAbduh, Muhammad 299–300, 322 Abu Dhabi 24, 236 Abu Magd, Kamal 323 Agrama, Hussein Ali 385 Ahali Group 51 al-Ahmad, Yusuf 216 Ahmadiyya 377 al-Ahmari, Muhammad 216 Ahrar al-Sham 122, 123 Alawis 107, 108–9, 121, 123 ʿAmara, Muhammad 323 Alexander, Anne 9 Alexandria 71–2 Algeria 11, 70, 71, 72, 83, 86, 91; “dark decades,” 90; and fln, 86; and nationalist movement, 76; and Kabyle Berbers, 88, 97; and National Charter 82; and social contract 82 Allahim, ʿAbd al-Rahim 213 Almestad, Ida 23 Amazigh 7, 88, 97 amdh 96 Amir, Abd al-Hakim 87 Arendt, Hannah 130 Armenians 79, 107 ʿasabiyya 110 al-Asad, Bashar 113, 115–6, 251, 261 al-Asad, Hafez 87, 109, 115, 116, 251–2, 255 Assyrians 49, 79 Attiah, Ahmad 503 Auda, Jasser 335 Authenticity 139 Authoritarian bargain 14, 23, 67–8, 79–83, 248; in Egypt, 81, 301; in the Gulf, 230; in Jordan, 183–4; Saudi Arabia, 204, 206; in Syria, 111; in Tunisia, 81, 133–4; restoration of, 98; and unravelling of, 90–2, 95–6, 184, 254

Authoritarian resilience 2, 12, 16, 248; ­critique of, 1, 16, 198 Authoritarian state (authoritarianism) 1, 12, 20, 27, 80, 247; and clientelism, 420–422 Autocracy (liberalised): in Jordan 184, 186; in Morocco, 149–50, 251 al-Awadhi, Aseel 436, 445–6 ʿAwda, Salman 209, 216 al-Azhar 365 al-ʿAzm Sadiq 26, 110, 303–4 al-ʿAwwa, Muhammad Salim 26, 323, 332, 396 Baʿath Party 182; in Iraq, 89; in Syria, 83, 106–110, 121–8, 322 Badawi, Raif 214 Badiou, Alain 308–9, 312 Bahaʾi 28, 390–401 Bahaʾuʾllah 392 Bahrain 11, 41, 97, 230, 237, 240, 248, 262, 440; and labour movement, 59; and Shiʿis, 97 Balibar, Étienne 514–8, 525 al-Barawi, Rashid 84 Bassiouny, Mostafa 9 baʿya, in Morocco 155; in Saudi Arabia, 203, 206 al-Bayanuni, Ali 327 Beaugrand, Claire 31 Belghawat, Mourad 151 Belhaj, Ali 168 Belkeziz, Abdelilah 305 Belmoudden, Fatima 163 Ben Ali, Zine Eddin 93, 129, 130–1, 168, 170 Ben Bella, Ahmad 86 Ben Himma, Fouad Ali 155, 165–6 Ben Youssef, Salah 139 Bennabi, Malik 302–3, 316 Benmessaoud, Rachida 163 Benzekri, Driss 158 Berbers 75, 88, 97 (see also Amazigh) Berger, Maurits 385 Bidun 7, 30, 31, 230, 441, 458–61, 463, 488–508 al-Bishri, Tariq 26, 307, 323, 332

536 Bourguiba, Habib 86, 131, 133, 139; conceptualisation of citizenship, 134 Boutaleb, Assia 30 Brahimi, Mohammed 141 Browers, Michaelle 26 bssc 117–8 al-Burhami, Yasir 354 Butenschøn, Nils 24, 178, 189, 196–7, 377 Capitulations 46, 68 ccdc 117–8 Chambers, Samuel 308 Chamoun, Camille 264 Christianity (Christians) 47, 75, 107–108, 302, 320, 324, 328, 379, 388 Circassians 48, 107 Citizenship: and accountability 93, 142; and active (citizenship), 15, 30, 42, 185; and acts (performativity) of citizenship, 15, 17, 30, 96, 311, 471–3, 478–85, 523–9; and agency, 2, 16, 526; and alienation, 229; and anti-sectarianism, 118; and Arab Uprisings, 2–3, 98, 175, 247, 251, 254, 266, 296, 308–16, 333, 421, 436, 439, 461–3, 471–4, 490, 500–3, 512, 524; and assimilation, 14; and civic identity, 123; and citizenship regimes, 6, 12, 14, 20, 28, 75, 79, 80, 99, 235, 246–50, 263, 265, 384; definition of, 67; citizen rights, 6, 7, 8, 10, 14, 20, 22, 45, 62–63, 130, 134, 144, 230–5, 274, 298, 324–8, 358, 377, 473, 488–508; citizenship studies (theory), 3–5, 16, 17, 31–32, 67, 175–6, 178, 198, 219, 512–30; civility (civic spirit, civicness), 6, 48, 60, 92, 137; ideological history of, 26; and civil (civic) state, 10, 26, 92, 116, 117, 216, 323, 330, 335; and civil society, 5, 9, 16, 89, 105, 115, 142, 149, 162, 251, 355, 422; and civil rights, 13, 14, 21, 30, 98–9, 183, 203, 207, 231, 328, 447, 503, 512; class (struggle), 22, 83, 105, 112, 121, 122, 134, 138, 444; and clientelism (and patronage) and, 12, 22, 29, 74, 77, 82, 87, 110, 112, 115, 149–171, 248–54, 263, 409–431, 490–1, 508; and collective rights, 234; and colonial bargain 73, 99, 248; and colonialism, 41–63, 67-; 107, 248, 518–525, 528, 529; and the common (general) good, 17, 25, 304, 479; and community (religious), 207,

Index 329; concepts (notions and theories) of citizenship, 6, 20, 25, 76, 131, 133, 142, 185, 297–316, 322, 329–30, 349–53, 356–8, 359–67, 379, 383, 474, 476–85, 503–7, 522–4; and crisis of, 1, 2, 3; crossclass coalitions, 132; cross-ideological coalitions and, 9, 322; cross-sectarian coalitions, 111; and cultural rights, 8, 78, 91, 513; democratic citizenship, 131, 150, 152, 161, 171, 248, 263, 409–10, 416; and demos, 130, 133; and de-politicisation, 88, 90, 183; and de-mobilisation, 183; and dignity, 137; and discourse of rights, 53, 76, 506, 511; and discrimination, 28, 68, 98, 225; and duties of, 27, 298; and equal duties, 59, 206, 303, 324, 328; and economic rights, 55, 78, 91, 98, 133, 137, 300–1, 437, 438, 447, 459–60, 471; economic citizenship, 504, 507; emergency laws, 61; everyday citizenship, 96–7, 125; equal rights, 10, 11, 12, 69, 75, 76, 88, 91, 99, 112, 115, 116, 118–9, 253, 297–8, 301, 324, 328, 334–35, 445–52, 459, 502; exclusion, 2, 6, 12, 14, 20, 27, 28, 68, 70, 78, 79, 88–9, 98, 225–6, 344–52, 377, 459, 474, 490–1; extent, content and depth 12–38, 176, 178, 189– 99, 353; and family law, 437; foreign intervention, 12; and foreign privileges, 46, 49, 263; foreign residents, 504; and freedom of association (assembly), 59, 137, 143, 204; and freedom of speech (press), 10, 14, 25, 51, 53, 59, 62, 137, 143, 204, 208, 218, 301, 482; and freedom of religion, 143, 381, 385, 387, 388, 393; graded citizenship, 70, 83, 208–9, 227, 232, 234, 498; hierarchy of 24, 230–35; and housing, 454–8; human agency and, 10; human rights, 51, 96, 142, 156, 493, 500, 503; and identity (politics), 8, 14, 79, 80, 88–9, 105, 107, 111–112, 116, 226, 307 (cultural/authenticity), 234–5, 307; illegal residents, 502–4; and Islamic identity, 123; inclusion and, 3, 6, 11, 12, 21, 22, 68, 78, 91, 99, 106, 115, 126, 152, 306, 312, 321–22, 490–1, 518; individualism, 140, 306, 321; jinsiyya, 179, 189, 193, 253, 450; and justice, 298; and legitimacy, 12, 24, 110, 130, 138, 139, 146, 248, 257, 266, 383; liberalisation

Index (economic), 185; and marginalisation, 225; migrant rights, 230–234, 440, 495–6, 511, 526; and migration, 18, 224; minorities, 68, 234, 377–8, 387, 388, 495–6; and minority rights, 47, 49, 97; minority studies and, 4–5; and migration and, 4, 224–238; mobilisation (see also contestation), 132, 252, 254; and differences between monarchies and republics, 80, 176, 248; muwatana (muwatin), 6, 25, 26, 179, 189, 210, 305, 325, 331, 338, 353, 503, 506–7; and nation (watan), 105, 133, 189, 227, 299, 325; and nation-building, 105, 133–4, 384, 392; nationalist movement, 67, 74–6; and nationalisation, 83–4, 89; and nationality laws, 45–6, 59, 445–52, 495–6, 488–508; and naturalisation, 226–7, 229, 231–2, 240–1, 491–2, 498, 503; and natural law, 506; and noncitizens, 17, 31, 68, 438, 440, 488–508, 522; and non-Muslims, 300, 305–6, 320, 322–4, 328, 334–5, 398–99; and obedience, 206, 514–8; and parliamentary system, 439; passport, 253 (see also jinsiyya) patriarchy (paternalism), 87, 153, 155; and patronage (see also clientelism); personal status law, 381; performativity, 517–8; and planning, 83–5; and pluralism, 130; and political participation (political citizenship, politicisation), 60, 93–4, 156, 181, 183, 248, 301, 321, 323, 440, 443–45, 475, 480– 5; and political rights and, 13, 14, 21, 23, 48, 83, 89, 98–9, 135, 181, 183, 186, 203–4, 234–5, 253, 300, 328, 512; (state) politics of citizenship, 247, 385, 512; in practice, 522; primordial bonds, 5, 248; and public order, 385–87, 393, 395; public sector, 83–4, 111, 184; and foreign privileges, 69–71; refugees, 253, 511, 526; regional rivalries, 257–62; and rentier-state, 204, 207, 226, 228–35, 249–50; and religious rights, 142; and repression, 90, 252; and rule of law, 10, 11, 12, 74, 112, 142, 144, 274–5, 282, 287, 322; and sectarianism, 12, 110, 112, 118, 121–3, 232, 529; security, 226; and segregation, 236; sexual rights, 513; and Shariʿa, 274; social contract (pact), 11, 67–8, 79–81, 91–9, 111, 129, 132,

537 182, 204, 219, 248, 356–7, 440; and social engineering, 84; and social media, 151, 204; and social rights, 8, 11, 14, 21, 23, 30, 91, 98–9, 133, 134, 183, 203, 301, 453, 459, 471, 512; and social justice, 6, 26, 80, 188, 302; and social movements, 94–5, 105, 488–508; and sovereignty of the people, 27, 43, 76, 82, 130, 216, 297, 312, 334, 358; and state boundaries, 251; subjects, 274, 514–8, 526; and thin citizenship, 15; and statelessness (see also bidun), 7, 30, 31, 230, 232; and legal status, 70, 235, 274, 488–9; and terrorism laws, 144; transparency, 439; tribalism, 230, 303, 529; and trust, 248, 266; umma, 305; and unemployment, 132, 184; and weak states, 250; and the welfare state, 91, 135, 203; and women’s rights, 4, 19, 21, 25, 28, 30, 74, 82, 143, 152, 160, 211–2, 225, 232, 286, 322, 327–8, 388, 439–67, 502 Citoyennité 76 Civil rights movement in the United States 13 Civil society (see citizenship) Civil society 5, 9, 16, 89, 105, 115, 142, 149, 162, 251, 355, 422 Coalition of Revolutionary Opposition Forces 120 Colonialism (see citizenship) Communism 302; in Egypt, 52, 83; in Iraq, 53 Communitarianism 15, 383 Constitutions 18, 25, 28, 42; after the Arab Uprisings, 97–8; in mandate Iraq, 42–45, 59; under the Egyptian monarchy, 43, 50–1, 59; and Egyptian Constitution of 1923, 384; and Egyptian Constitution of 1971, 383; and Egyptian Constitution of 2012, 329–30, 375–7, 387–91, 397; Egyptian Constitution of 2014, 398–99; in Jordan, 182; in Morocco, 150; in mandate Palestine, 43–45, 59; in Saudi Arabia (Basic Law of Governance), 206; in Trans-Jordan, 43–5; in Tunisia, 129–30, 142–3; in Dubai, 236; Ottoman constitution, 321–2; in Syria, 331; Medina Constitution, 325, 331 Consular jurisdiction 68–9

538 Contestation (mobilisation) 8, 16, 17, 94–95, 105, 150, 252, 254, 296, 309–11, 523–4; in Morocco 475–85; in Egypt, 475–85; repertoires of, 8, 296, 478–80, 500–8; of bidun in Kuwait, 488–508 Copts 49, 75, 97, 320, 384, 398–400 Corporatism 83, 95; in Syria, 112, 115; in Tunisia, 133–4 Cosmopolitanism 71 Cromer, Lord 50 Crony capitalism 91, 113, 116, 135 al-Dajani, Ahmad Sidqi 307 al-Dakhil, Khalid 211, 213 Dashti, Rola 436, 444–5, 453, 464 Democracy 1, 14, 41, 63, 247, 302, 308; democratisation, 16, 185, 409, 414; lack of democracy, 263, 265; Islamic democracy, 322 Dhimmi (ahl al-dhimma) 28, 215, 286, 305–6, 323, 325, 353, 358, 378, 394 Dubai 24, 236, 239 Economic liberalisation 16 Effendi, Shoghi 392 Egypt 7, 8, 28, 30, 46, 50, 94, 248, 252, 255, 258–9, 375–401; Arab Socialist union, 83; Arab Uprisings, 310–13; and clientelism, 421, 426 (see also citizenship); Egyptian Constitution of 2014, 398–99 (see also constitutions); and Copts 7; Britain in 42; and elections, 93–4; and fellahin, 71; foreigners in, 71; freedom of speech 53; and judges in 7; and labour movement, 55–6, 77–8; minorities in, 74; National Charter, 82; and political rights under the British 50; and unravelling of the authoritarian bargain, 91 (see also authoritarian bargain); and Salafi reformists, 215–7; and the Wafd Party 74; youth, 471–485 Elalamy, Moulay Hafid 158 El Fassi, Abbas 164 El Himma, Fouad Ali 159, 165–6, 169 El Kheil, Fatna 163 El Ouadi, Salah 168 El Yazghi, Mohamed 164 Emir Abdallah al-Salem 440 Emon, Anver 378, 380 Eisenhower 264

Index Elections 22, 93–4, 475; in Tunisia, 130 Ennahda 10, 11, 93, 139 Exclusion (see citizenship) al-Fadhli, Abdul Hakim 503 al-Failakawi, Shuruq 464 al-Fassi, Allal 79 al-Faysal, Saʿud 205 Free Syrian Army 122 Ferguson, Michaele 308, 311 gcc 262–5 Gender rights (women’s rights) 4, 19, 21, 25, 28, 30, 74, 82, 143, 152, 160, 211–2, 225, 232, 286, 322, 327–8, 388, 439–67 Ghannouchi, Rachid 335 Gorman, Anthony 20 Greater Syria 106 Greeks 71, 79 Gulf: authoritarian bargain 230, 235; and citizenship, 24, 63, 224–236; migrant laws, 234; and migrants, 224–238, 230–4; and nationality 225; kafala system 230–1, 234, 237, 239; and high modernism, 227, 237; and naturalisation of migrants, 226–7, 229, 231–2; and rentier-state, 204, 207, 226, 228, 232–6; and graded citizenship, 232; as “besieged” society, 233–5, 242; and identity, 234–5 al-Haj Saleh, Yassin 315 Hallaq, Wael 377, 382 Halliday, Fred 178 Hamed, ʿAbdallah 214 Hammoudi, Abdallah 155 Hanafi, Hasan 306 Hassan ii 154, 158, 165 Hawwa, Saʿid 322 Heikal, Mohammed Hasannein 304 Hinnebusch, Raymond 21 Hizb al-Nour 354–55, 357–8, 365 Hizb al-Wasat 356 Hizb al-Watan 355, 357, 359 Hmam, Anas 481 Horizontalism 311 Hudson, Michael 1 Human rights organisations 96; Morocco 9, 96; Tunisia 9, 96 Hurd, Elizabeth Shakman 384

539

Index Hussein (King) 182, 264 Hussein, Louay 117 Hussein, Saddam 90 Huwaydi, Fahmi 305, 323, 332, 396–7 Liberal democracies 5 Ibn Khaldun 110 Ibn Taymiyya 280, 299 ʿImara, Muhammad 396 imf 134 Intellectuals 14, 85, 253, 297–316 Iran 258–60, 262–6, 305, 323 Iraq 20, 43–48, 51, 73, 78, 83, 248, 258–9, 261; and Ahali Group, 51; and Great Britain in 41; and colonial rule, 73; and labour movement, 56–8, 78; and republic of fear, 89; and Shiʿis, 97; and isis, 98 Isin, Engin 31–2 Iskander, Adel 310–312 Islam: Islam and politics 273, ʿulama, 273, 232–5; and subjects, 274; turath (heritage), 306; asala (authenticity), 307; Medina Constitution, 325 Islamic identity 123 Islamic movement 9, 14, 19; and discourse of citizenship 14; cultural exclusion 14 Islamic law 10, 19, 25; common good (almaslaha al-ʿamma), 17, 25, 333; hisba 25; equal rights non-Muslims 26, 323; kuffar 26, 323; duties 27; civil state, 335 Islamic state 324 Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (isis) 98, 122, 125, 261, 347, 357, 364 Islamism 25, 79, 114, 118, 320 Islamists 26, 91, 139, 143, 151, 160; and citizenship, 383; and clientelism, 423 Ismail, Salwa 310 Israel 253, 258, 417 Jbabdi, Latifa 163 Jabhat al-Nusra 122, 124 al-Jabri, Muhammad ʿAbid 301, 307 al-Jassar, Salwa 436, 444–5 al-Jawhar, Hassan 499 Jews 89; in Egypt, 74–5; in Iraq, 49, 74; in Tunisia, 75; in Algeria, 75 Jihadism (jihadis) 119, 122–23 jinsiyya 179, 189, 193, 445–52 jizya 122, 277, 379–80, 390

Jordan (Trans-Jordan) 22–3, 41, 47–8, 94, 175–199, 262–3; and Arab Uprisings, 187–9; and austerity measures, 91; and clientelism, 421; and elections, 93–4; constitution of 1952, 182; de-politicisation, 183; 187; National Charter, 185–6; and national identity, 190–97; and economic liberalisation, 186; and political parties, 183; and political rights, 181; and politicisation, 185; “Transjordan for the Transjordanians,” 182 Judiciary 112 Judaism 28, 329, 388 Justice and Freedom Party (fdp) 27 kafala system 230–1, 234, 237–8 Kacem, Mehdi Belhaj 311 Karpat, Kemal 382 al-Kawakibi, ʿAbd al-Rahman 322 Khaddam, ʿAbdul-Halim 110 Khalid, Khalid Muhammad 79 Kifaya 476 Koudama, Fetoum 163 Al-Khayir, Abdelaziz 117 Kurds 47, 48, 89; in Syria, 114, 116 Kuwait 7, 29, 30, 230, 236, 237, 239; Arab Uprisings, 500–3; and bidun, 488–508; bidun social movement, 500–3; and housing, 454–456; and migrants, 441; nationality laws, 447, 495–6; naturalisation, 503; and social contract, 440; and women rights, 440–67 Labour (movement) 55–6, 62, 132, 134; and nationalism, 59; migrant labour (the Gulf), 224–243 Lachguer, Driss 164 Lahjouji, Abderrahim 168 League of Nations 41 Lebanon 75, 252–3, 262–3, 413, 418 Liberalism (liberals) 85, 91, 116; in Saudi Arabia, 203, 212–5 Libya 11 Al-Madi, Abu al-ʿAla 356 Maghraoui, Driss 151 Mahmood, Saba 377, 387 Makiya, Kanan 87 makrama 82, 90 Maktabi, Rania 29

540 Makhlouf, Rami 114 Makhyun, Yunus 365 al-Maliki, Abdullah 216 Manaʾ, Haytham 117 Mansour, ʿAdli 398 March, Andrew 378–9 Marshall, T.H. 203, 230 al-Mawardi 280 Meijer, Roel 20, 176–9, 181–5, 187, 189, 199, 383, 519, 530 Migrants, position in the Gulf 24, 495–6 (see also citizenship) Millet (milla) 28, 107, 329, 380; and nation-state, 382 Minorities 69, 74–5, 109, 116 (see also citizenship) Mohamed vi 156; and concessions civil rights, 156 Monarchies 80–2; Moroccan monarchy, 152–5 Morocco: in general 7, 8, 9, 10, 22, 30, 68, 76, 83, 91, 95, 250–51; al-Adl wa-l-Ihsan, 169, 306, 484; Amazigh (Berbers), 8, 97; amdh, 8; and austerity measures, 91; and civil society, 9, 22, 162, 165-; colonial rule, 72, 74; democratic citizenship, 150, 161, 171; and elections, 93–4; Equity and Reconciliation Commission, 165; and exclusion, 158; February 20 Movement, 9, 10, 11, 22, 150, 152, 167, 472, 475–6, 483; and freedom of press, 156; al-Istiqlal Party, 78–9, 156, 163–4; and the monarchy, 152–5, 165–7; and Moudawana, 156, 160; and neo-patrimonialism, 153; Party of Authenticity and Modernity (pam Party), 155, 165; Party of Progress and Socialism (pps), 156; Party of Justice and Development (pjd), 10, 11, 156, 158, 165–7, 251; increasing strength of the monarchy, 159; and political parties, 152–171; and Socialist Union of Popular Forces (usfp), 157, 164; and Tamazight, 98; tansiqiyyat, 9, 96; and trade unions, 95; women rights, 160–7; youth, 30, 471–85 Morsi (Mursi), Muhammad 11, 261, 321, 332, 424, 479 Mortada, Leyl-Zahra 314–5

Index al-Moubarak, Maʾsouma 436, 444–5, 453 Mourtada, Fouad 151 Mubarak, Hosni 11, 98, 170, 320 Mounjib, Mâati 484 Muqaddam, Muhammad Ismaʿil 354 Muslim Brotherhood: in Egypt 6, 10, 11, 18, 21, 25, 26, 83, 258, 261, 264, 386–7, 424; and authoritarian state, 81 (see also authoritarianism); and civil state, 323; and democracy, 320–1; and concepts of citizenship, 322, 326–8, 329–30, 351, 395–6; and Egyptian Constitution of, 212, 229–30, 321; eviction from power, 321; in Jordan, 183; in Kuwait, 458; and legitimacy, 321; political participation, 323; political reform programme, 326–8; and post-Islamism, 92; in Syria, 10, 89, 93, 112, 116, 123, 322, 327, 330; Freedom and Justice Party, 328, 365; and secularism, 529; shura, 323 Nabulsi, Suleiman 182, 183 Nahda 297, 306 Naʿini, Muhammad Husayn 305 Najjar, Ghanim 499 Nasser, Gamal Abd al- 86, 255–6, 301 Nation 105 Nationalism 75, 79 Nationality laws 46 (see also citizenship) Naturalisation 46, 226–7, 229, 231–2, 240, 243, 498 (see also citizenship) Neo-Destour Party 83, 86, 133, 139 Neo-liberalism 2, 21, 114, 188 Neo-patrimonialism 110, 115, 153, 248, 253, 261–2 Obama 265 Orientalism 1, 50, 72, 409, 519–21, 528 Ottoman Empire 46, 68–9, 79, 526–7; Tanzimat, 69, 106; and millet, 381–2 Palestine 20, 41, 53–4, 58–9, 61, 63 Palestinians 79 Pakistan 377 Pan-Arabism 107, 110, 113, 116, 181, 255, 257–8 Pan-Islamism 107 Pan-Syrianism 107 Patriarchy 87

Index Patrimonialism 417 Patriotism 300 Peres, Shimon 192 pkk 122 plo 192–4 Pluralism 130 Political liberalisation 113 Political parties 93–4, 183 Political participation: in Morocco 105; in Saudi Arabia, 204; in Egypt, 354 (see also citizenship) Politicisation 203 Poljarevic, Emin 27 Popular Committee for the Bidun 499–500 Public sector 111 pyd 122 Post-Islamism 92 Pluralism 47 Public order 28 al-Qahtani, Muhammad 214 al-Qahtani, Muhammad bin Ghanim 217 Qaradawi, Yusuf 26, 305, 320, 332; on non-Muslims; 323–5; on shura, 324; reform in Egypt, 327; common good (al-maslaha al-ʿamma), 333; in defence of Mursi 333 Al-Qarni, ʿAyidh 216 Qasim, Abd al-Karim 87, 88 Al- Qassemi, Sultan Sooud 224, 232, 239, 243 Qatar 24, 224, 236, 239, 332 Qutb, Sayyid 79, 302–3, 322, 327 al-Raggal, Aly 311 Ramadan, Oula 119 Rançière, Jacques 309, 311, 313 rawafid 209 rcd 135, 139 Refugees 253 Reimer, Michael 71 Repression 90 Republics 80 rhizomatic 311 Rida, Rashid 300 Rifai, Ola 21 Rifai, Samir 187 Rouissi, Khadija 168 Ruedy, John 72

541 Saʿadun, Ahmad 497 al-Sabah, Sheika Fawzia bint Salim 499 al-Sadat, Anwar 87, 258, 322 Salafism 22, 25, 27, 77, 81, 93, 114, 116, 122, 338; and ahl al-dhimma, 353; and allegiance, 344, 364–5; civic virtue, 354; and civility (rifq), 340; and conceptualisation of citizenship, 349–53, 356–8, 359–67; and exclusion, 344–52; and “friend” and “enemy,” 338–9, 343–46, 366; and hisba, 341; and inequality, 345, 364–67; in Kuwait, 454, 458; and manhaj, 343; and the Egyptian military, 357; and the nation-state, 340, 347, 349; and Nour Party, 354; and people’s sovereignty, 349, 358; and the political, 343–46; and political participation, 348; and politics 27, 343–7, 352–56; practices and doctrine, 338–41; in Saudi Arabia, 218, 359–62; and state sovereignty, 349; in Syria, 113, 116, 122; in Tunisia, 138, 139, 140, 143; and secularism, 529; al-walaʾ wa-l-baraʾ (loyalty and disavowal) 27, 346, 348, 366; and wali al-amr, 27 Sater, James 22, 24 Saudi Arabia 11, 23, 203–220, 230, 237, 257–61, 264, 359–362; Arab Uprising, 97; Basic Law of Governance, 206; citizen rights, 203–5, 206, 208; concepts of citizenship, 218; economic liberalisation, 110; and freedom of speech, 218; graded citizenship, 208; Islamic Umma Party, 209; and liberals, 209–11; makrama 23, 27, 360; and mobilisation (lack of), 205; and modernists 11; and naturalisation, 241; and political rights, 203, 209; and rule of law 11; and religious establishment, 205; Shiʿis in, 97, 203, 209–11; social contract, 203, 207–8; social media, 204, 217; social rights, 203, 217; repression uprisings in Bahrain 12; gender rights, 211–2; and Salafism, 215–8, 359–362; Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (acpra), 214; Saudi-Egyptian axis, 257–62; and sectarianism, 216; wali al-amr, 203, 206; women’s rights, 211–3

542 al-Sayf, Tawfiq 209 Schmitt, Carl 227 Scott, Rachel 28 Sectarianisation 122 Sectarianism 12, 21, 27, 113–114 Secularism (secularists) 139, 529 Shaqfa, Muhammad 327 Shariʿa 122, 274, 321, 438, 474; apostasy, 214; and citizenship, 274; codification of, 378; dhimmi, 286; and (hadd) hudud, 276, 280, 283, 288, 335; and huquq Allah, 275–80, 285, 287–8; and istihsan, 282; justice, 287; and kufr, 390; in Kuwait, 438, 442, 464; and maqasid, 278–81, 335; and maslaha (istislah), 282; and mazalim courts, 281–5, 288, 290–92; muhtasib, 285–6; non-Muslims, 122; and rights 274–5; rule of law, 274, 282; and the ruler (imam), 277–9; al-siyasa al-sharʿiyya, 279–286, 290–92; “spirit of the Shariʿa,” 279–80, 288; and status, 274; and taxes, 277 al-Sharif, Manal 212–3 Sheikha Awrad 499 Shiʿa (Shiʿi) 23, 47, 60, 97, 230, 264; in Iran, 323; in Saudi Arabia, 203, 209–11; in Kuwait, 440 Schmitt, Carl 344 Sidqi, Aziz 85 al-Sisi, Abd al-Fattah 261–2, 332, 365, 366, 482 Skovgaard-Petersen, Jakob 26 Social contract 5, 11, 21 (see also authoritarian bargain) Social movements (see also contestation) 8, 15, 62, 347; in Tunisia, 132, 136; social ­movement theory, 17, 150; and Arab ­Uprisings, 94–5; in Jordan, 182; and ­Salafism, 347 Springborg, Robert 29, 151–2 Stenslie, Stig 23 Sudan 426 Syria 7, 10, 21, 105–28, 248, 251–3, 258–60, 261, 322; anti-sectarianism, 118–120; and Arab Uprisings, 310; Baʿathism, 114; and civil society, 105, 113, 115; civil state, 124; civil war, 253, 310; and colonial rule, 73, 75; and cross-sectarianism, 113, 117; and

Index Damascus Spring, 21, 113; and identity, 111, 117, 123; and isis, 98; and land reform, 83; militarisation of the Uprising, 118; public sector, 83; nationbuilding, 105–7; regime repression 11; rule of Hafez al-Asad, 87–8; and sectarianism 118–23; Syrian and National Congress, 120; and Tsunami Freedom Movement, 118–9; and tansiqiyyat, 125; unravelling of the authoritarian bargain, 91 Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party 83, 108 Tahrir Square 478 al-Tahtawi, Rifaʿi Rafaʿa 298, 300 Tangier 71 Taylor, Charles 307 Tizini, Tayyib 307 Traboulsi, Fawwaz 312 Trade unions: and Arab Uprisings 95–6; in Egypt, 8, 9, 77, 81, 95; in Morocco, 95, 150; in Tunisia, 8, 9, 77, 81, 95, 131, 142 Trucial States 41 Tully, James 518–9, 521 Tunisia 7, 21–22, 69, 71, 72, 75, 76, 78, 88, 129–48, 252; citizenship rights, 144; civil society, 142; elections, 144; and family law, 437; ferghala uprising, 90; freedom of religion, 143; National Pact, 82; national unity, 130, 134, 137–8; political rights, 135; Salafism, 138, 139, 140, 143; social pact, 129, 132, 134–5, 138; sovereignty of the people, 130–144; surveillance, 136; utica, 142; tunisianité, 22, 88, 131, 140–4 Turkmen 47, 93, 107 United Arab Emirates (uae) 224, 237 United States of America (usa) 264 Valbjørn, Morten 22 Vikør, Knut 25 Vilayet e-faqih 323 wali al-amr 203, 206, 359 Wedeen, Lisa 96 Willis, Michael 86

543

Index Working class 3 Wasatiyya 7, 10, 26, 93, 94, 305, 394–5 Yazidis 47 Yemen 248, 261, 426 Youssoufi, Abderrahman 154, 164 Youth 2, 7, 28, 30; acts of citizenship, 471– 85; and economic rights, 471; in Egypt, 471–85; exclusion 474–5; in Morocco,

168, 471; and parliamentary elections, 475, 478; and police repression, 482–5; political participation, 475–9; in Saudi Arabia, 203; in Syria, 117–25; in Tunisia, 135, 136, 188 Zemni, Sami 21 Zionism 393 Zizek 308, 313–5