Political Islam under debate

The parties and movements grouped together within Political Islamism have become the largest opposition force in many countries in the Middle East and the north of Africa. In the great majority of cases, the region's regimes have chosen to repress these movements, or to allow them very limited access to power. The international community, and particularly the USA and the countries of Europe have been complicit in this strategy. Is maintaining this stance sustainable? In order to debate the challenges presented by this situation for domestic and foreign policy, the CIDOB Foundation and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation held a debate on 4 June in Barcelona which featured the participation of eminent experts including Sami Zubeida, from Birkbeck College, Moattaz Fattah, from Cairo University, Fred Halliday, from the IBEI, and Madawi al Rasheed, from King’s College, London.

The debate was structured around two questions. The first was whether political Islam could be a force for democratic reform. There was considerable debate over the democratic nature of these movements, but the speakers concluded that emphasis should be placed on the dynamic of institutionalisation, and not only on the electoral process, and it was also stressed that it was hard to answer this question, given that these groups had not had the chance to exert power in a normal manner. The second question was whether international actors – and especially the United States and the European Union – should enter into dialogue or even cooperate with the movements. 

During the debate, the point was made that US and European strategies for promoting democracy and stability have failed. The cases of Iraq and of Hamas were the main subject of the speakers' interventions. There was general agreement among the participants that the question of whether discussions should be held with these groups was a question that was now redundant, given that when it has been in international actors' interests, they have had no qualms about not only entering into dialogue but even supporting political Islam against other political factions.

This public debate took place within the framework of an academic meeting of the group State, Nation and Religion in the contemporary Islamic world. At the meeting, which was held on 4-5 June, a number of studies were presented on the dynamics of competition, compatibility and overlap between Islamist and nationalist ideologies and movements.