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This paper examines the relationship between al-Azhar and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) following the 2011 Egyptianuprising. While the interplay between them in the pre-revolutionary period was mostly shaped by the gap between the status of al-Azhar as a body of statist Islam and the MB as a dissident Islamist movement, Mubarak's downfall yielded a change in their status, raising the question of its effect on their attitude toward one another. Though on the face of it, following Morsi's ouster, al-Azhar seems to have reverted to its traditional position of backing the de-legitimization campaign of the authoritarian regime against the MB, the paper portrays a more intricate picture: not one of close affinity during the MB's rule despite the potential to realize common interests and advocate centrist Islam, but one of competition over religious authority; not one of utter hostility following al-Azhar's support of the coup, but one of restrained conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the strategic deployment of religion by the Egyptian military regime as a legitimizing tool for the 2013 military coup and ensuing rule. Central to the analysis is the role of the Egyptian Dar al-Ifta, a pivotal state religious institution, in securitizing the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates. While multiple frameworks exist to dissect regime preservation tactics, the research harnesses securitization theory to illuminate these strategies. Grounding the arguments in the foundational works of Juha Vuori in nondemocratic contexts, it contends that the Egyptian military regime tactically utilized religious institutions to securitize its adversaries and enriches the extant literature by integrating securitization principles within the Egyptian context and emphasizes underexplored narratives from the Global South. Moreover, it seeks to bridge a research gap on the nexus between religious institutions and individual actors and delves into the intricate interplay between religious and political discourses by examining speeches and statements infused with religious rhetoric for legitimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regarded as Egypt's most influential oppositional force, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) was analysed from a Gramscian lens that projected it as a counterhegemonic force par excellence. Its all-sufficient Islam, cohesive organisational structure and ability to wage a war of position were considered to represent parallels to Gramsci's revolutionary methodology. This article contests this narrative by focusing on the MB's inability to deal with state coercion, its intellectual inertia and failure in governance, and its passive revolutionary and neoliberal tendencies. Against the backdrop of resurgent authoritarianism and the MB's downfall, it has become imperative to rethink our dominant understandings of (counter)hegemony and resistance. The article concludes by arguing that the MB's failure to fundamentally challenge the hegemonic order and instigate social change should not deter other movements from continuing to do so. Instead, lessons from the MB's limitations must be heeded with Gramsci remaining key in aiding such endeavours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political failure of the Islamist project in Egypt was cemented after the 2013 military coup and subsequent massacre in Rabaa al-Adawiyya Square. For Islamist activists, their cultivation of moral and political agency was directly linked to their understanding of the problem of suffering and God's action. This article shows three accounts of theodicy. The first account is a traditional Islamist one exemplified in Sayyid Qutb's theodical interpretation of the story of the Christians of Najran in the Qur'an which affirms otherworldly retribution. The second account is an account of a citizen journalist in which he contends with the silence of God and the devaluation of Islamist theodicies. The final account is that of state theodicy – which has to contend with its "good fortune" thereby creating categories of legitimate suffering. These competing theodicies thus function in creating social and metaphysical structures of suffering and privilege. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two decades on from the 2002 Bali bombings, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) has transformed into a fullfledged hybrid militant group that operates on three main fronts: social (i.e. school and dakwah, or religious outreach), military and political. Whilst JI’s social and military fronts have continuously featured in the group’s operations since 1993, its establishment of a political wing more recently – embracing democracy and participating in Indonesian political parties – signals the group is possibly learning from other militant outfits such as the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and Hezbollah in Lebanon. In the near term, the decapitation of JI’s military and political wings, due to a series of arrests in recent years, means its resilience and adaptability will mainly depend on its social front. Multiple factors, such as the presence of rogue elements within JI capable of conducting attacks amidst the group’s present leadership vacuum, the policies of the next JI leader and the prospect of “black swan” events, will determine if JI will revive its aspirations for a military arm as mandated by its organisational guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on political Islam suggests that support for early Islamist movements came from literate merchants, government officials, and professionals who lacked political representation. We test these claims with a unique tranche of microlevel data drawn from a Muslim Brotherhood petition campaign in interwar Egypt. Matching the occupations of over 2,500 Brotherhood supporters to contemporaneous census data, we show that Egyptians employed in commerce, public administration, and the professions were more likely to sign the movement's petitions. The movement's supporters were also overwhelmingly literate. Contrary to expectations, the early Brotherhood also attracted support from Egyptians employed in agriculture, albeit less than we would expect given the prevalence of agrarian workers in the population. A case study tracing Muslim Brotherhood branch formation and petition activism in a Nile Delta village illustrates how literate, socially mobile agrarian families were key to the propagation of the movement in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's trajectories in the aftermath of 2013 up to 2018, focusing on the main challenges that the movement faces when trying to react to its perceived failure and ongoing repression. Following the coup, the Brotherhood entered a state of stagnation that is currently struggling to break out from. With most of its historical leadership either abroad or in jail, the Brotherhood is splintering into different factions and therefore lacks a coherent strategy vìs-a-vìs the regime and a cohesive sense of identity. Similarly, the organization's removal from Egypt's socio-political life—coupled with the unprecedented intensity of state repression- mean that the Brotherhood needs to develop new ways to survive illegality and stagnation. This article argues that, under such unfamiliar circumstances, the movement is growing increasingly divided by tensions between stagnation and adaptation strategies. This is manifested in the disconnect between the Brotherhood organization's response to repression and that of its members. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Turkey and the UK between 2013 and 2018, with both current and former members, the paper shows that the Brotherhood's fragmentation is driven by tensions between historical stances and desires to adapt to its current situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article studies newly established parties with roots in social movements. Using the post-Spring development of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisian al-Nahda as in-depth empirical cases, the study reflects on prevalent theoretical explanations for the transitions of social movements into political parties. The paper argues that extant literature on party system institutionalization and the development of social movement organizations do not adequately explain the driving factors for the transition process of movements into parties. A focus on party systems does not take note of the dynamics of movement-party relations, while social movement theory remains steeped in conceptions of institutional evolution and 'natural progression' in politics. When rethinking party institutionalization, it needs to be recognized that it is a precarious process during which features of social movement activism overlap with the formalized engagement that characterizes political parties. The comparative study of the Muslim Brotherhood-led Freedom and Justice Party and the Tunisian al-Nahda Movement and its al-Nahda Party exemplifies that the degree to which leading parties emancipate themselves from the guardianship of their 'mother-organizations' is an essential factor for democratic state-building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to explore the relationship between informal institutions, institutional change and gender equality2 in the context of the political struggle that took place in the aftermath of the 25 January uprising in Egypt. The paper argues that although the 25 January revolution presented Egyptian feminists with an excellent opportunity to put gender equality on the political agenda and build gender equality issues into the fabric of the new institutional and governmental blueprints and structures, they have failed to do so for several reasons. First, because of the monopoly exercised by two powerful inherently conservative patriarchal institutions, namely the Muslim Brotherhood and the Military establishment, not only over the formal political institutions, but also over informal institutions. The paper uses a single case study approach analyzed from a feminist institutionalist perspective. It draws upon insights from existing literature and upon the author's personal experience as first-hand witness to these events, as well as semi-structured interviews with a number of prominent feminists representing different political and ideological schools. This method was chosen to gain deeper insights into the perceptions of feminists who were directly involved in the events of that 'critical juncture' either through formal political institutions, or informally through engagement in street politics, about the multiple intersecting and complex institutional barriers, constraining women's agency during that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we explain the neoliberal orientation of Islamist movements in the Middle East? This paper attempts to answer this question by exploring the case of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. It analyzes in depth the Brotherhood's socio-economic vision and policies when it was in power between 2012 and 2013. It argues that the Brotherhood adopted a market-oriented vision, which encouraged the private sector, liberalized the economy, and appealed to foreign investments. As a socio-political movement, the Brotherhood attempted to strike a balance between its constituency, which is rooted in the lower, middle, and upper-middle classes, and its commitment to neoliberal policies. However, this paradoxical balance burdened the movement and affected its popularity. The article also contends that the Brotherhood's neoliberal leanings can be explained by three key factors: the movement's pragmatism, its "devout" bourgeoisie, and the appeal for international acceptance and recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the denial and distortion of the Holocaust and the destruction of European Jewry. It further discusses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) to define Holocaust denial and Holocaust distortion; the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II; and establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt by Hassan el-Banna, expressed sympathy and admiration for the Nazi movement.

This article examines the repression-dissent nexus in Islamist social movements. Several studies have overwhelmingly focused on the effects of repression on protest volume, level, and tactics. However, understanding the responses of individual members to regime repression and how they relate to the movement's collective response is rarely discussed. By analysing the response of the Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood to regime repression since the coup of 2013, this article explains the effects of repression on opposition movements. It argues that to understand the impact of repression on these movements, we need to differentiate between the collective and individual responses to repression. These two levels of analysis are crucial to better understand the repression-dissent nexus. Also, the article contends that collective and individual responses to repression cannot be explained by focusing solely on the structural and institutional factors (i.e. organization, ideology, leadership, etc.). Members' personal experiences, memory, emotions, and trauma play a key role in shaping their response to repression. The article thus accounts for both the formal and informal effects of repression on Islamists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to 'Abd al-Mun'im Abu al-Futu , then a prominent Egyptian Ikhwan figure, the position of the Jordanian Ikhwan diverged significantly from that of the Egyptian Brotherhood, which attempted to assert a position for the Brotherhood as a collective:The Jordanian Brothers may have had a more rebellious position than others for they backed addam usayn and some of their preachers started comparing him to ala al-Din. The Jordanian Brotherhood's position on Palestine was far more politically strident in opposing the Jordan-Israel peace accords signed in 1994 and marked the first hints of a structural transformation in the relationship between the Ikhwan and the Jordanian state. 1 The terms "Muslim Brotherhood", "Ikhwan", "Muslim Brothers", "Brothers", and "Brotherhood" will be used interchangeably throughout this article to refer to the Muslim Brotherhood. 27 The terms "Muslim Brotherhood", "Ikhwan", "Muslim Brothers", "Brothers", and "Brotherhood" will be used interchangeably throughout this article to refer to the Muslim Brotherhood. [Extracted from the article]

Unprecedented levels of state violence against the Muslim Brotherhood, and the widespread acceptance of this violence by Egyptians following the July 2013 military coup, have been under-examined by scholars of both critical security studies and Middle East politics, reflecting implicit assumptions that state violence is unexceptional beyond Europe. This article explores how the deployment of such levels of violence was enabled by a securitization process in which the Egyptian military successfully appropriated popular opposition to Muslim Brotherhood rule, constructing the group as an existential threat to Egypt and justifying special measures against it. The article builds on existing critiques of the Eurocentrism of securitization theory, alongside the writings of Antonio Gramsci, to further refine its application to non-democratic contexts. In addition to revealing the exceptionalism of state violence against the Muslim Brotherhood and highlighting the important role of nominally non-state actors in constructing the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to Egypt, the article also signals the role of securitization in re-establishing authoritarian rule in the wake of the 2011 uprising. Thus, we argue that securitization not only constitutes a break from 'normal politics' but may also be integral to the reconstitution of 'normal politics' following a period of transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah as-Sisi (al-Sisi), claiming he is a political reformer, with a particular focus on his relationship with the organization the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and Islamists. An overview of the history of the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian military from 1936 through the 2010s is provided. Sisi's policy of allegedly protecting Christian minorities in Egypt, including Coptic Christians, is discussed.

The article discusses the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, with a particular focus as to whether he's a Salafist, including Sisi's religious identity. An overview of Sisi's relationship with the organization the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Islamists and the Egyptian armed forces, or military, is provided.

The article discusses the competition for regional leadership between Egypt, under President President Abdel Fattah Sisi, and Saudi Arabia, under crown prince Muhammad bin Salman. An overview of their mutual opposition to Iran and to the alliance between the organization Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey and Qatar is provided.

We argue that multiple levels of trauma were present in Egypt before, during and after the 2011 revolution. Individual, social and political trauma constitute a triangle of traumatisation which was strategically employed by the Egyptian counter-revolutionary forces – primarily the army and the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood – to maintain their political and economic power over and above the social, economic and political interests of others. Through the destruction of physical bodies, the fragmentation and polarisation of social relations and the violent closure of the newly emerged political public sphere, these actors actively repressed the potential for creative and revolutionary transformation. To better understand this multi-layered notion of trauma, we turn to Habermas’ ‘colonisation of the lifeworld’ thesis which offers a critical lens through which to examine the wider political and economic structures and context in which trauma occurred as well as its effects on the personal, social and political realms. In doing so, we develop a novel conception of trauma that acknowledges individual, social and political dimensions. We apply this conceptual framing to empirical narratives of trauma in Egypt’s pre- and post-revolutionary phases, thus both developing a non-Western application of Habermas’ framework and revealing ethnographic accounts of the revolution by activists in Cairo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deconstructs the dichotomization of Islamic educational institutions into those run under the state's purview and those operating as 'parallel' Islamic institutions usually as part of Islamic group activism. It argues for the existence of 'fuzzy' Islamic educational institutions that have merged dīn (religion) and dunyā (life) – without delving into the modern dawla (state). Focusing on contemporary Egypt, the paper uses Sheikh al-Amoud as a case study of these 'fuzzy' Islamic educational entities that have emerged as Islamic publics following the 2011 Egyptian uprisings attracting a wide array of Muslim youth in Egypt. The paper expects Sheikh al-Amoud to survive partly due to its non-political orientations and to its indirect connection with al-Azhar. Due to the novelty of the topic, the paper mainly depends on fieldwork through interviews and observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the potential and value system/affordances of new/social media technologies, such as social networking, video-sharing and blogging/microblogging. It highlights the four foundational components of the value system of technologies including content, collaboration, community and understanding. It refers to teh role of websites in international communication in Middle Eastern authoritarian contexts and public sphere or counterpublic realities. It explains inward and outward address simultaneously conducted by counterpublics and the case of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

The following article addresses the intricate issue of contemporary Islamist thought's relation to the modern capitalist economy, with special reference to the Egyptian case. Islamist thinkers have been vigorously proclaiming for the past decades that the economic prosperity of some Muslim nations stems from the proper adoption of an 'Islamic economy', whereas the absence of such a model has been mainly responsible for the crises that other nations faced. At the same time, we witness that the Muslim nations are fully integrated into the global market system. Although their rulers boast about achieving social justice, by economically interpreting Islam, nonetheless poverty and horrific injustices are officially retained and morally accepted, thus, enabling the upper classes to keep performing their pious duties in the name of God. In this regard, it seems that capitalism and piety are intertwined: the first justifies the necessity of the second, while the second humanizes the brutal impact of the first. By referring to the historical example of the Muslim Brothers in pre-socialist Egypt, the article tends to show under which circumstances was capitalism's relation to religious piety conceptualized in Islamist thought and literature, in addition to the main social, organizational and ideological outcomes of this conceptualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's transnational media advocacy as a shift in the Islamists' political participation in general and the Brothers' in particular. The article argues that the Brothers created their own TV channels in order to challenge the new regime's legitimacy after 3 July 2013 by taking advantage of a sympathetic political environment in Turkey. Their media advocacy embraced a collective Islamic identity in its denunciation of the Sisi regime and called for a democratic restitution as a common Egyptian cause. Based on interviews conducted with TV presenters and a content analysis of the expatriates' TV channels, this study presents transnational advocacy as a novelty in the Islamists' repertoire of action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on the hypothesis that the Egyptian institutional media played an active role in the Egyptian ‘Arab Spring’ revolution in 2011 and analyzes how Egypt's official newspapers constructed and presented a moderate and positive image of the Muslim Brotherhood (hereinafter the Brotherhood) despite the fact that they had labeled the Brotherhood ‘the outlawed movement’ a year earlier. In order to examine whether their attitudes changed after the downfall of the Mubarak regime, a critical discourse analysis of newspaper texts has been made of the news columns written throughout 2011 of two of the most popular Egyptian newspapers – al-Ahram(n= 115) andal-Gumhuriyya(n= 94) both of which identify with the Egyptian government's official policy. In addition, an analysis made of three of the Brotherhood's publications (n= 72) (N= 281) revealed that the Brotherhood exploited the printed media not only to replace the regime but also to gain control of its narrative. Ultimately, by controlling the shaping of public opinion, the media contributed to the drawing of a parallel between the motivation that formed the basis of the mass protest and the Brotherhood's agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Political Islam and Islamist organizations have broadly gained strength across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the post-Cold War era. Following the Arab uprisings, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), generally viewed as the world’s largest and most influential Islamist organization, has shaped the wider landscape of MENA politics. This study examines MB leadership by comparing M. Morsi of Egypt, R. Ghannouchi of Tunisia, and K. Meshaal of Gaza as examples of Islamist leaders to explain their political belief systems and predict their foreign-policy behavior. We use the operational code approach, a content-analysis software and statistical tests to conduct the study. Results show that the three leaders’ foreign policy beliefs are analogous to the averages of world leaders. Results also partially support the hypothesis that their foreign-policy propensities are similar to each other. We conclude that despite the conventional portrayal of MB leadership, these leaders use negotiation and cooperation to settle their differences in foreign affairs, and the best way to approach them is to engage in a Rousseauvian assurance game that emphasizes international social cooperation. Results also suggest important implications in terms of mainstream international relations theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of climate change, controlling water sources is one of the most explosive challenges to the stability of the security environment. Almost all human civilization has been born in the plains of the great rivers because they have provided humans with both the basic resources of survival and development and natural protection against invasions. Such a stream is the Nile, in the basin of which were born the great Egyptian, Nubian and Ethiopian civilizations. If, until recently, Egypt was the main beneficiary of the Nile’s “gifts”, the project of the Great Barrier of the Ethiopian Renaissance under construction on the Blue Nile course radically changed the state of affairs. What will be the impact of this barrage on regional hydropolis? Is it possible to witness the outbreak of a regional war? And if the answer is yes, what could be the impact of an Egyptian-Ethiopian conflict on regional security? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 25 December 2013, the military-backed government in Egypt declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization. A few months later, the Saudi Kingdom followed suit and attempted to build a regional coalition to counter this constructed enemy. Although the Saudi Kingdom, acting as an aspiring regional autocratic power, exerted pressure to compel other regimes to follow its lead, the recipient states varied in their willingness to converge. Whereas the United Arab Emirates followed the Saudi lead, Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain resisted the diffusion of repression against the Muslim Brotherhood to their domestic spheres. This article examines this variation in the (non-)convergence of repressive policies as an outcome of diffusion. While most explanations of how autocratic policies diffuse focus on either ideology or interest as drivers of state behaviour, this article provides a nuanced understanding of this phenomenon. Based on a neoclassical realist approach, I explore the variation in the convergence with fellow autocrats as the result of interaction between regional interests and regime autonomy vis-à-vis societal groups. By looking at autocratic diffusion of repression as a process lying at the intersection of regional and domestic spheres, this article contributes to the literature on the international diffusion of authoritarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Muslim societies have been reshaped in recent decades by an Islamic revival. We document a contemporaneous decline in social mobility among educated youth in Egypt, the epicentre of the movement in the Arab world. We then develop a model to show how an unexpected decline in social mobility combined with inequality can produce a religious revival led by the educated middle class. The principal idea is that religion helps individuals to cope with unfulfilled aspirations by adjusting their expectations-based reference point. By raising aspirations, economic development may make societies more prone to religious revivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the legislative recruitment of women from conservative Islamist parties. It questions the common assumption that generally all Islamist parties are equally hostile to political participation and representation of women. For this purpose, two of the electorally most successful Islamist groups in the MENA region are compared, namely the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and its Moroccan offshoot, the Party of Justice and Development (PJD). The article seeks an explanation for diverging trends in female candidacy between these conservative religious movements, using the traditional supply and demand model of candidate selection. It argues that the less centralized and the more institutionalized parties (as is the case with the PJD) seem to be better equipped to facilitate women's candidacy than the more oligarchic ones (the MB). In order to fully grasp the reasons behind the diverging trends in the nomination of female candidates from both Islamist parties, cultural factors are scrutinized as well. The article highlights the limits of the supply and demand model of candidate selection, which cannot explain instances of unexpected change in recruitment strategies based on external interference. Furthermore, it does not provide us the means to assess the impact of individual candidates' 'feminist credentials' on overall female representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discuses various reports within the issue on political parties in the Middle East including the development of political parties in the Middle East and North Africa, elite women in Islamic political movements, and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

In April 2011, the Egyptian Muslim Brothers (MB) founded the first political party in their 83-year-long history, known as the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). Yet the party remained under the control of its parent organization—theGama’a(literally the ‘community’)—and its internal apparatus, theTanzim. While both had been shaped during decades of MB’s semi-clandestine existence as a banned-yet-tolerated group, these did not adapt to the changing socio-political configuration and have resisted the transition to fully overt activity. Through an analysis of the FJP’s uneasy creation and with a grounding of extensive empirical research, this article argues that the party’s development was to a certain extent hampered by those pre-existing organizational structures. Organizational crystallization prevented the party from conforming to the emerging rules of the political field then under construction. Instead, theGama’a’s undefined nature and opaque pattern of regulation were replicated within the FJP’s structure. Thus, the article seeks to uncover a hitherto hidden aspect of in the MB’s post-2011 failure, one which is rooted in organizational dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the organization the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), contending the group should be designated as a terrorist organization for allegedly supporting Islamist violence and jihad. It discusses the history of the MB in Egypt, including its members in the Egyptian Army and its putative influence on the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

This research analyses the comparative institutionalization of the strategies of three major components of the Egyptian Islamist social movement family: the jihadis, the Muslim Brotherhood and the salafis. It uses historical institutionalism to amend rational choice paradigms and to investigate the constraints and opportunities posed by these actors’ past trajectories on their subsequent strategic choices. This article argues that 1981 and 2011 were two critical junctures that have shaped these actors’ ideational and organizational construction through path-dependent causal mechanisms regulating their mobilization and socialization processes. It contends that these mechanisms have shaped these groups’ evolution and mediated the institutionalization of their strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including political violence, the role of social service provision by Egyptian Islamist organization Muslim Brotherhood on its reputation, and repression and mobilization in the process of democratization.