1 00:00:04,260 --> 00:00:12,480 Good evening and welcome to our third session of the webinar series for this term Hillery term at the Middle East centre. 2 00:00:12,480 --> 00:00:16,710 And my name is Sam Azami and it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to our 3 00:00:16,710 --> 00:00:21,600 third session on religion and secularism in the context of the Arab uprisings. 4 00:00:21,600 --> 00:00:29,550 And this is an opportunity for us to reflect ten years on on the way in which religion has featured as a prominent part of the Arab uprisings, 5 00:00:29,550 --> 00:00:37,620 but also secular voices. And we have two speakers, two wonderful speakers to kind of give us the two perspectives on this question. 6 00:00:37,620 --> 00:00:40,830 We're really happy to be able to welcome Nadia away, 7 00:00:40,830 --> 00:00:47,250 Dad and Shadi Hamid both beaming in from across the Atlantic in Washington, D.C., as I understand. 8 00:00:47,250 --> 00:00:52,860 And we're also very proud to have them here because they're both graduates of the Middle East centre. 9 00:00:52,860 --> 00:00:57,720 Nadia is also a class of twenty seventeen Richardson fellow at New America. 10 00:00:57,720 --> 00:01:01,640 She holds a deep faith in Oriental studies from the University of Oxford. 11 00:01:01,640 --> 00:01:06,300 She is currently working on a book on social media and positive change amongst Arabic speakers. 12 00:01:06,300 --> 00:01:11,400 And her doctoral research focussed on the challenges facing liberal Muslim intellectuals who attempt to update 13 00:01:11,400 --> 00:01:16,170 Islamic thought and bridge the gap between modern values such as secularism and women's rights in Islam. 14 00:01:16,170 --> 00:01:20,940 Prior to her doctoral studies doctoral way that worked as a research associate at Rand Corporation, 15 00:01:20,940 --> 00:01:29,130 where she has led several research projects and our second speaker, again, a graduate of the Middle East centre and the University of Oxford. 16 00:01:29,130 --> 00:01:35,870 Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Centre for Middle East Policy and a prolific author, 17 00:01:35,870 --> 00:01:43,020 author of Islamic Exceptionalism, most recently How the Struggle over Islam is Reshaping the World by St. Martin's Press. 18 00:01:43,020 --> 00:01:47,670 And this was shortlisted in 2017 for the Allina Gober prise. 19 00:01:47,670 --> 00:01:53,430 I see. Most recently, because he has actually I should correct that he's he's published coedited volumes since then, 20 00:01:53,430 --> 00:02:01,980 including a coedited volume entitled Rethinking Political Islam, published with Will McCants and published by Oxford University Press. 21 00:02:01,980 --> 00:02:09,690 And we're delighted to have the two of you here to talk really about what it is that we can learn from the past 10 years and what 22 00:02:09,690 --> 00:02:17,070 we perhaps could expect going forward with respect to the question of religion and the question of secularism in the Middle East. 23 00:02:17,070 --> 00:02:22,170 And as I should say right now, please feel free to put in your questions. 24 00:02:22,170 --> 00:02:25,950 Those who are joining us, you're more than welcome to put in questions and comments. 25 00:02:25,950 --> 00:02:30,490 And they will be done by my colleague Michael Willis around the midpoint. 26 00:02:30,490 --> 00:02:36,030 And NATO will begin by speaking for about ten to twelve minutes, followed by Shaddy for about another ten to twelve minutes. 27 00:02:36,030 --> 00:02:43,650 And then we will go into discussion mode and allow you all to interrogate and learn from our two distinguished speakers. 28 00:02:43,650 --> 00:02:48,570 So without further ado, I'd like to welcome Nadia. Thank you very much. 29 00:02:48,570 --> 00:02:53,600 Wonderful to be with some of my favourite people in the world. Eugene Rogan, Michael Wallace. 30 00:02:53,600 --> 00:02:57,510 Chad, the academy also, like Salman said, went to Oxford as well. 31 00:02:57,510 --> 00:03:02,490 So we share that love of our alma mater. So the subject of religion. 32 00:03:02,490 --> 00:03:12,600 I mean, if we talk about the Middle East, not just in the past 10 years, but in fact in the past fifteen hundred years or even much older. 33 00:03:12,600 --> 00:03:19,950 There is not another topic that have impacted the region more profoundly than religion. 34 00:03:19,950 --> 00:03:25,110 It has changed the geography of the region. It has changed its language. 35 00:03:25,110 --> 00:03:32,880 It has changed its culture. So it has been shaping the region for thousands of years, without exaggeration. 36 00:03:32,880 --> 00:03:41,680 But if you look at the Muslim world and in the Arab world in particular. A shift has been taking place, especially in the last. 37 00:03:41,680 --> 00:03:49,480 I mean, this shift has been happening in the last maybe 20 years, but the Arab Spring witnessed a tipping point in this shift. 38 00:03:49,480 --> 00:03:53,200 But let's go back a little bit to the beginning of this shift. 39 00:03:53,200 --> 00:04:05,320 So the Muslim world was very confident, actually asserting in its cultural and moral, if you would, an even political superiority. 40 00:04:05,320 --> 00:04:10,270 It had nothing to learn from anywhere in the world, nothing at all. 41 00:04:10,270 --> 00:04:15,220 But it just wanted to take what's been agreed technology from the West. 42 00:04:15,220 --> 00:04:21,190 And, you know, because the West advanced so quickly, I need to tell you that it had a moment of like where they are advancing. 43 00:04:21,190 --> 00:04:28,600 What's wrong? Why have we missed out? Because we are supposed to be the one, as we said, and Muslim on oh language. 44 00:04:28,600 --> 00:04:30,880 It should have been ours. 45 00:04:30,880 --> 00:04:41,170 But along with the borrowing of this technology, ideas, modern ideas of separation of church and state, personal liberties like freedom of expression, 46 00:04:41,170 --> 00:04:51,550 freedom of conscience, freedom of enquiry, all of these moral values were introduced to the Muslim world and they have been causing a rift, really. 47 00:04:51,550 --> 00:04:55,120 Some believe they are irreconcilable with Islamic culture. 48 00:04:55,120 --> 00:05:00,100 They're very different. It's a very different paradigm. Can these two paradigms exist? 49 00:05:00,100 --> 00:05:09,880 And what happened is at the beginning, we see that these ideas have, in fact, champions from within the intellectual class of the Muslim world. 50 00:05:09,880 --> 00:05:12,880 That starts with the rise up, for example. 51 00:05:12,880 --> 00:05:19,660 And Magico, actually, you know, the rise of essentially said the caliphate, it is is not really mandated by Islam. 52 00:05:19,660 --> 00:05:27,160 In fact, the caliphate has brought nothing but grief to Muslims. The masses have been suffering under dictatorships in the name of counterfeits. 53 00:05:27,160 --> 00:05:31,180 But there's absolutely nothing in the Koran that mandates that we need a caliphate. 54 00:05:31,180 --> 00:05:37,650 In fact, we need these modern European essentially ways of governance. 55 00:05:37,650 --> 00:05:41,970 And of course, that was an accepted by a lot of traditional conservative voices. 56 00:05:41,970 --> 00:05:48,480 And he was tried for a quest to see he was fired from his job as a as Harry sculler. 57 00:05:48,480 --> 00:05:52,050 He was forbidden from ever holding any position. 58 00:05:52,050 --> 00:06:00,420 When you have a second wave of intellectuals taking on the subject of modernity and modern values and religion, 59 00:06:00,420 --> 00:06:06,320 because, again, religion controls every aspect of people who live in the Arab world, every aspect, really. 60 00:06:06,320 --> 00:06:13,980 And especially as a woman, I know this firsthand. And so then you have a second generation of reformers like Nasser Hameed Abuzaid, 61 00:06:13,980 --> 00:06:19,470 who not only argued that his most I was so excited to see that at Yale University Press 62 00:06:19,470 --> 00:06:26,130 published his book and set up a detailed critique of religious thought for our discourse. 63 00:06:26,130 --> 00:06:29,610 And he not only critique this marriage between politics and religion, 64 00:06:29,610 --> 00:06:35,550 but even religion and even business, giving as an example that a lot of, you know, 65 00:06:35,550 --> 00:06:41,910 average Egyptians lost their retirements because they invested in so-called Islamic investments, 66 00:06:41,910 --> 00:06:46,200 as if if something has delivered Islamic, it automatically means that it will quadruple in profit. 67 00:06:46,200 --> 00:06:51,720 And there is no chance at all of it. You know, it doesn't apply to the rules of finance. 68 00:06:51,720 --> 00:06:56,810 It applies to the divine rules of Islam. And he basically Abuzaid, again, 69 00:06:56,810 --> 00:07:05,250 he represents a large number of intellectuals that want to separate their religion from politics and the public sphere in general. 70 00:07:05,250 --> 00:07:12,630 But all of this we're still at the intellectual level and the masses, you know, the very traditional in their outlooks to life. 71 00:07:12,630 --> 00:07:18,120 And, you know, Islam and spirituality in general plays a huge role in all of humanity's daily life. 72 00:07:18,120 --> 00:07:25,030 But Islam was very much intermingled with the state, even as many states modernised. 73 00:07:25,030 --> 00:07:33,040 So what happened is in a culture where there is really no critique of free increase, free exchange of ideas. 74 00:07:33,040 --> 00:07:40,570 I mean, I can if I may have the liberty to say, look, somebody who grew up in Jordan, in the Arab world, went to Islamic schools, 75 00:07:40,570 --> 00:07:46,730 went to Koranic memorisation schools, went all the way up until I finished my university at the University of Jordan, 76 00:07:46,730 --> 00:07:54,630 everybody had to take Shariah class and. There is no debate on anything that is even a little bit critical. 77 00:07:54,630 --> 00:07:59,160 It's a one way street. You either praise or you you're silent. 78 00:07:59,160 --> 00:08:03,310 So what happened is. And it was easy. 79 00:08:03,310 --> 00:08:06,900 Like, everybody's doing this. Classes are a one way street. 80 00:08:06,900 --> 00:08:11,220 It was easy to maintain a common culture. 81 00:08:11,220 --> 00:08:19,340 And what happened is the mid 90s, the Internet came about and something we've never had in such volume started to happen, 82 00:08:19,340 --> 00:08:26,810 which I believe led to the Arab Spring. One reason, but it's cause there is this is a very complex issue is that on the Internet. 83 00:08:26,810 --> 00:08:35,630 If somebody if people are debating very taboo issues. There is not the ability to immediately intimidate them and silence them. 84 00:08:35,630 --> 00:08:37,070 There is not that ability. 85 00:08:37,070 --> 00:08:46,610 So if somebody asked very controversial questions and write up questions like how could the concept of Subi be divinely inspired, 86 00:08:46,610 --> 00:08:51,320 like it's rounding up people's daughters to be sexual slaves. 87 00:08:51,320 --> 00:08:54,470 How could a prophet practise savvy? How could this be in the Koran? 88 00:08:54,470 --> 00:09:01,730 How could I mean, again, like most people are a product of the 21st and 20th century environment. 89 00:09:01,730 --> 00:09:07,520 They take for granted human rights and a lot of individual rights and a lot of even Islamists. 90 00:09:07,520 --> 00:09:17,560 And my colleague Shaddy will cover that voice. But all of a sudden, we start to see incredibly audacious voices. 91 00:09:17,560 --> 00:09:20,360 And not only that. So I was noticing before the Arab Spring, 92 00:09:20,360 --> 00:09:26,810 I was seeing that there's definitely something unprecedented in the Arab world because these debates, I had questions. 93 00:09:26,810 --> 00:09:34,370 I couldn't. There's no way I could. You ask a question, even in the most respectful way, you're inviting abuse, if not more. 94 00:09:34,370 --> 00:09:44,030 So even scholars didn't escape sometimes. So. So all of a sudden that space unleashed an avalanche of debates. 95 00:09:44,030 --> 00:09:46,000 Unprecedented. 96 00:09:46,000 --> 00:09:54,610 So in 2000, I kept agitating about wanting to really study that space, and as an intellectual historian, I wanted to see how is it this virtual space? 97 00:09:54,610 --> 00:10:00,040 How is it impacting the way the Arab world is processing these ideas? 98 00:10:00,040 --> 00:10:04,780 Because it definitely, my opinion, causing a shift in consciousness, without a doubt. 99 00:10:04,780 --> 00:10:07,480 And you know how I know that for certain. 100 00:10:07,480 --> 00:10:16,910 If you look at the Arab Spring and that really was the epitome of how we see that change the calls where for. 101 00:10:16,910 --> 00:10:23,480 Madani, though, Lemonnier, a civic state. And if you know, like about the Middle East, 102 00:10:23,480 --> 00:10:31,020 a civic state is as close as you can come to saying we don't want Shariah or a religious state or an Islamic state. 103 00:10:31,020 --> 00:10:36,030 We want a state where the laws are written by people. We can challenge them. 104 00:10:36,030 --> 00:10:40,890 We can change them. We can adjust them. It's not, you know, God's law. 105 00:10:40,890 --> 00:10:47,910 It's madness. It's people's law. So that is as close as this is unprecedented. 106 00:10:47,910 --> 00:10:57,620 It was never a debate that we haven't Islamic. I mean, again, anybody who came even close before that is essentially inviting violence. 107 00:10:57,620 --> 00:11:02,070 So how did that happen, like to go all the way to a civil state? 108 00:11:02,070 --> 00:11:10,130 And I don't want to negate the importance or the potency of the Islamist voice as well. 109 00:11:10,130 --> 00:11:15,530 But again, allegedly cover that. And this doesn't mean that Islam will disappear. 110 00:11:15,530 --> 00:11:22,600 But the shift is I think it really is amazing. And it is worthy of study, of being studied. 111 00:11:22,600 --> 00:11:29,420 So what happened is a lot of former Muslims also started to have YouTube channels 112 00:11:29,420 --> 00:11:34,110 to good they rectally to the heart of these controversial issues like slavery. 113 00:11:34,110 --> 00:11:41,710 Like a lot of a lot of the heritage. In fact, a lot of us, I myself can speak again from experience. 114 00:11:41,710 --> 00:11:49,000 We discovered our history by these banned books. I mean, the Internet all of a sudden allowed an avalanche of knowledge. 115 00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:57,910 We didn't even know existed. All the in books like, for example, the books of the Lakota saying to me is the father of Arab Effie's. 116 00:11:57,910 --> 00:12:02,320 And I was hearing his voice from former I kid you not former imams. 117 00:12:02,320 --> 00:12:08,920 I mean, no, actually, former imams. Some of them are still in their positions, but who no longer believe in Islam. 118 00:12:08,920 --> 00:12:15,140 But I was really intrigued by them because, wow, I mean, I was interviewing them to get the moderate Islam version. 119 00:12:15,140 --> 00:12:21,340 And they're like at the Torah, by the way, you know, I really don't believe what happened is like. 120 00:12:21,340 --> 00:12:25,260 And then I asked if I can record them just for me and have hours and hours. 121 00:12:25,260 --> 00:12:31,250 No, I am going to publish an article of the intellectual journey of these former imams. 122 00:12:31,250 --> 00:12:37,150 But when even people who like, you know, these are not laypeople, one of them taught at an immense university in Yemen. 123 00:12:37,150 --> 00:12:41,500 One was what was I still alive in Jordan for 16 years? 124 00:12:41,500 --> 00:12:50,080 And I was seeing this everywhere. And my trouble until I'm gonna share with you just a screen for a split second, and that would be eight. 125 00:12:50,080 --> 00:12:55,540 I was looking at The Economist and I saw an article about the number of Muslims 126 00:12:55,540 --> 00:13:00,760 in America actually is also in the Arab world increasing and the number is, 127 00:13:00,760 --> 00:13:06,700 according to Pew Research, 23 percent, which is this is almost a quarter. 128 00:13:06,700 --> 00:13:13,660 Basically, almost a quarter of Muslims are no longer identifying as Muslims when the punishment for apostasy is death. 129 00:13:13,660 --> 00:13:17,680 So what I'm saying in conclusion, is that there's a shift happening. 130 00:13:17,680 --> 00:13:22,390 It's no longer just the Islamist and traditional. There's a very potent voice as well. 131 00:13:22,390 --> 00:13:27,730 And the minority, that one's religion to be a private matter, just like it is in the West. 132 00:13:27,730 --> 00:13:32,290 And let's talk about another important voice. Q Thank you so much, Nadia. 133 00:13:32,290 --> 00:13:33,890 Really fascinating perspectives. 134 00:13:33,890 --> 00:13:40,420 And, you know, it's not every day that we also get a bit of action on the screen by looking at The Economist or something like that. 135 00:13:40,420 --> 00:13:44,860 So, you know, it's wonderful to have a video. If anybody wants to see. 136 00:13:44,860 --> 00:13:50,170 But if you have a website or anything like that, I'm sure people would be very interested. 137 00:13:50,170 --> 00:13:55,870 Very interesting perspective, very interesting reading of the rise of modernity and the way in which sort of secularism is coming, 138 00:13:55,870 --> 00:14:00,870 as you put it, kind of liberated, sort of the rigidity in a place like the Middle East. 139 00:14:00,870 --> 00:14:05,650 And I think what will be interesting here is to see the way in which Chaddy, 140 00:14:05,650 --> 00:14:13,380 who's obviously someone who studies Islamists very closely and also will be very familiar with the US Hurn and traditionalist institutions as well, 141 00:14:13,380 --> 00:14:16,840 will potentially give us an interesting counterpoint to what you've just said. 142 00:14:16,840 --> 00:14:21,170 And I really look forward to the very dynamic discussion, which I'm sure will ensue from this. 143 00:14:21,170 --> 00:14:25,630 So without further ado, I'd like to hand over to you, shall we? Thank you. 144 00:14:25,630 --> 00:14:30,640 Well, first of all, it's great to be back virtually at Oxford, man. 145 00:14:30,640 --> 00:14:35,200 Thank you, Sam. Michael and Eugene, for having me. It's a pleasure. 146 00:14:35,200 --> 00:14:39,760 So when we're talking about the Arab Spring and I should be more specific. 147 00:14:39,760 --> 00:14:46,420 The Arab Spring and then the failure of the Arab Spring. The problem, in my view, isn't Islam. 148 00:14:46,420 --> 00:14:53,200 The problem wasn't Islam. The problem wasn't Devinn Islam's outsized role in public life. 149 00:14:53,200 --> 00:14:57,180 I would argue instead that the problem or if you will. 150 00:14:57,180 --> 00:15:04,520 The dilemma was the inability to accommodate Islam's role in public life. 151 00:15:04,520 --> 00:15:10,680 And really, the failure ultimately to accommodate Islam's outsized role in public life. 152 00:15:10,680 --> 00:15:17,010 Islam does play, again, I would argue, an outsized role in public life and in any a number of ways. 153 00:15:17,010 --> 00:15:20,520 And I think NATO has sort of discussed aspects of that. 154 00:15:20,520 --> 00:15:27,480 So if we take that as a given that there is still a large majority of Muslims in various countries. 155 00:15:27,480 --> 00:15:33,100 So we can take Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, so on. Tunisia is a little bit lower because of the secular background. 156 00:15:33,100 --> 00:15:40,230 We still see large majorities saying that they want Islam to play a prominent or central role in public life. 157 00:15:40,230 --> 00:15:46,050 So if that's the given and the question is what do we do with that? And that's part of what I want to address here. 158 00:15:46,050 --> 00:15:52,920 Now, this inability to accommodate Islam's public role, it's not a new problem. 159 00:15:52,920 --> 00:16:01,410 This has been a and in many cases, the foundational divide since independence and even before independence. 160 00:16:01,410 --> 00:16:04,170 And let me just backtrack a little bit here. 161 00:16:04,170 --> 00:16:17,850 If we're looking at the premodern era, Islam provided an overarching moral and legal and religious architecture for the better part of 14 centuries. 162 00:16:17,850 --> 00:16:26,430 It went without saying. So it wasn't said. So what that meant in practise is that Islamists didn't exist in the premodern era. 163 00:16:26,430 --> 00:16:32,970 It wouldn't have made sense for Islamists to exist because the very idea of Islamism would be redundant. 164 00:16:32,970 --> 00:16:36,690 No one questioned Islam's role in public life. 165 00:16:36,690 --> 00:16:44,820 Of course, there was diversity in various levels of practise. And, you know, Kalis themselves weren't always known as being very observant themselves. 166 00:16:44,820 --> 00:16:53,740 But everyone upheld the notion that there was an overarching legal and moral architecture. 167 00:16:53,740 --> 00:17:00,940 Then something happened. And this is where the story overlaps with some of what Nadia said, that we have, first of all, 168 00:17:00,940 --> 00:17:13,180 secular ideologies being introduced in the 19th century and then in the first half of the 20th century and then nationalist regimes post independence. 169 00:17:13,180 --> 00:17:17,590 They wanted to dominate their societies. They wanted to centralise power. 170 00:17:17,590 --> 00:17:22,230 So they felt the need to control and regulate Islam. 171 00:17:22,230 --> 00:17:23,460 So in some ways, 172 00:17:23,460 --> 00:17:33,870 it was ostensibly secular regimes that ended up further politicising Islam through their efforts to domesticate Islam visa b the state, 173 00:17:33,870 --> 00:17:42,390 because if there's some tension between Islam's sort of sort of power and resilience on one hand and the nation state on the other. 174 00:17:42,390 --> 00:17:47,460 If you're an authoritarian post independence leader, the solution is obvious. 175 00:17:47,460 --> 00:17:56,370 You have to find a way to cut Islam down to size in terms of how it can challenge power and your rule. 176 00:17:56,370 --> 00:18:03,600 So eventually, most Arab countries, I mean, really over the past process, over the past century, 177 00:18:03,600 --> 00:18:10,680 the primary cleavage became one around the role of religion and Islam's relationship to the state. 178 00:18:10,680 --> 00:18:18,690 The state's relationship to Islam, and this is obviously different than many other regions were, you know, for for many decades. 179 00:18:18,690 --> 00:18:24,330 The primary cleavage would tend to be economic in nature. And that's how we saw the left right spectrum. 180 00:18:24,330 --> 00:18:28,530 Generally, the Middle East has had a different left right spectrum, if you will. 181 00:18:28,530 --> 00:18:34,950 And this isn't to say that there's just Islamists and non Islamists. There's various shades in between. 182 00:18:34,950 --> 00:18:42,840 A minority of secular elites, liberals, faux secularists, Islamists, lite, different strains of Islamism. 183 00:18:42,840 --> 00:18:48,090 So it's a very diverse framework and a very diverse array of actors and characters. 184 00:18:48,090 --> 00:18:52,860 But what distinguishes them from each other is their differing approaches to religion, 185 00:18:52,860 --> 00:18:59,700 not so much their differing approaches to economics or unemployment or whatever else it might be. 186 00:18:59,700 --> 00:19:05,910 So this is the cleavage that we have. This is the fundamental divide in not all Arab countries, 187 00:19:05,910 --> 00:19:12,630 but in many Arab countries and certainly in the ones that I tend to focus on more Egypt being the telling example. 188 00:19:12,630 --> 00:19:17,040 Now, this divide isn't necessarily something to lament. 189 00:19:17,040 --> 00:19:25,740 It's hard to imagine it being any other way, because with mass literacy, mass education and access to different sources of information, 190 00:19:25,740 --> 00:19:33,450 inevitably you're going to have a diversity of perspectives on politics and religion, which Nadia touched on. 191 00:19:33,450 --> 00:19:43,230 And in some ways, this is the natural condition of any modern society, is growing levels of ideological, ethnic and religious diversity. 192 00:19:43,230 --> 00:19:47,430 So then the question is, what do we do with this diverse reality? 193 00:19:47,430 --> 00:19:53,850 Because Islamists are not going to be able to defeat non Islamists and non Islamists 194 00:19:53,850 --> 00:20:00,900 or secularists in quotation marks will not be able to defeat or a race Islamism. 195 00:20:00,900 --> 00:20:05,880 These are ideas that are now entrenched in these respective societies. 196 00:20:05,880 --> 00:20:10,440 The Arab Spring. Then if we look at it from this perspective, what didn't happen? 197 00:20:10,440 --> 00:20:15,510 The Arab Spring was accommodating these two perspectives in a peaceful way. 198 00:20:15,510 --> 00:20:24,450 And that's why we see a resort to violence. So what I've laid out here is a different conceptualisation of the problem of Islam. 199 00:20:24,450 --> 00:20:29,520 And if we take this as the problem, then there's really only one solution. 200 00:20:29,520 --> 00:20:33,720 And I would say that solution is democracy, but not just any kind of democracy. 201 00:20:33,720 --> 00:20:39,960 Not even not even the virgin. Not even not liberal democracy that most Westerners favour. 202 00:20:39,960 --> 00:20:45,780 So I'm not talking here about a specifically Western style liberal conception of democracy, 203 00:20:45,780 --> 00:20:54,570 because part of the issue here in these Arab societies is that citizens can't agree on their conception of the good life. 204 00:20:54,570 --> 00:21:02,280 And that's why you can't come in and say, oh, liberalism or distinctly liberal version of democracy is the solution, 205 00:21:02,280 --> 00:21:07,950 because then you're basically imposing a particular understanding of the good life. 206 00:21:07,950 --> 00:21:16,320 And that's also why secularism isn't the answer. And one thing I talk about in my work is a minimalistic conception of democracy. 207 00:21:16,320 --> 00:21:20,790 And in this reading of the word democracy, democracy isn't a means to an end. 208 00:21:20,790 --> 00:21:29,760 It's not about starting with democracy and getting to liberalism or getting to rationality or other things that we hold dear. 209 00:21:29,760 --> 00:21:31,920 No, in this minimalistic conception, 210 00:21:31,920 --> 00:21:42,870 democracy is a way to manage and regulate conflict between opposing sides that don't like each other or perhaps even hate each other. 211 00:21:42,870 --> 00:21:48,480 So we don't want to ask for too much share. So when you have this teleological scenarios that, oh, 212 00:21:48,480 --> 00:21:55,830 one day the Middle East will become like other regions and people will become less religious and. 213 00:21:55,830 --> 00:22:01,920 People will secularise like they have generally in certainly in Europe and to various degrees in the US. 214 00:22:01,920 --> 00:22:08,760 I mean, my response would be this teleological scenario is maybe not the most helpful way of looking at it, 215 00:22:08,760 --> 00:22:15,450 because it presumes a lot of things that may not necessarily happen and very long into the future. 216 00:22:15,450 --> 00:22:22,500 The last thing I'll say is I just close up here is that so we have one option of accommodation. 217 00:22:22,500 --> 00:22:29,160 The other option is to say basically that we should insist, especially as westerner's in here, you know, 218 00:22:29,160 --> 00:22:36,540 speaking as an American, you think about the policy implications and how the U.S. should relate to the Middle East. 219 00:22:36,540 --> 00:22:47,520 Sometimes there is this desire to encourage secularism or to put pressure or to assume and the danger with this is that it might sound fine in theory, 220 00:22:47,520 --> 00:22:55,800 but in practise, any time you see, you kind of elevate secularism as the end goal in the Middle East, you end up with coercion. 221 00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:59,790 And we've seen this time and time again because the vast majority of citizens in these 222 00:22:59,790 --> 00:23:06,030 countries are not secular in the sense of wanting to separate religion from politics. 223 00:23:06,030 --> 00:23:11,160 There is there is no survey that I've been aware of where there is any significant 224 00:23:11,160 --> 00:23:16,530 support coming close to to a majority for separating religion from politics. 225 00:23:16,530 --> 00:23:25,710 People say they don't want clerics to play too much of a role or they don't want Islamic law to be implemented in a very strict literalist way. 226 00:23:25,710 --> 00:23:29,790 But that's a different issue than this kind of strict separation of saying 227 00:23:29,790 --> 00:23:35,280 religion is something private that has no implications for the public sphere. 228 00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:42,480 So the problem is you have masses of people who really aren't on board with the secular project. 229 00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:51,750 And then if you want secularism, then you basically have to you have to coerce and force people to get with the programme and taken to extremes. 230 00:23:51,750 --> 00:23:57,330 This can lead to something like Rahbar, the massacre that happened in August 2013. 231 00:23:57,330 --> 00:24:00,120 The Sisi regime isn't secular, persay, 232 00:24:00,120 --> 00:24:09,540 but I think it's fair to call Sisi anti Islamist and he and his supporters saw the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to the identity of the nation. 233 00:24:09,540 --> 00:24:14,010 So their response, which is very different than mine, mine is accommodation. 234 00:24:14,010 --> 00:24:23,580 Their response was brute force. And we don't just see this in Egypt, but any time there has been a perception of an Islamic or Islamist threat. 235 00:24:23,580 --> 00:24:31,950 We've had regimes basically resorting to coercion. They're not trying to convince people to not be Islamist or to do so through peaceful means. 236 00:24:31,950 --> 00:24:36,180 They say these people have too much influence and electoral support. 237 00:24:36,180 --> 00:24:43,470 They must be destroyed. So that's why I worry that once we start along, this path of secularism is good. 238 00:24:43,470 --> 00:24:45,420 Secularism is the answer. 239 00:24:45,420 --> 00:24:55,450 We inevitably come to a set of conclusions that is contrary to democracy and morally objectionable because it leads to coercion. 240 00:24:55,450 --> 00:25:01,090 Thank you so much, Chaddy. That's that's a fascinating sort of another counterpoint in many respects. 241 00:25:01,090 --> 00:25:03,400 I mean, you've both presented, I think, 242 00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:10,300 fascinating perspectives on the region and on specifically what's happened in India in the case of the Arab uprisings. 243 00:25:10,300 --> 00:25:14,620 But also your prescriptions are very different about the future. 244 00:25:14,620 --> 00:25:19,300 Of course, Chaddy, you're coming from the Brookings Institution and you're thinking like a policy man, as you should. 245 00:25:19,300 --> 00:25:22,720 But I want to actually take this opportunity to do two things. 246 00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:26,460 One is to encourage people. We have we have quite a few questions coming in. 247 00:25:26,460 --> 00:25:30,160 And Michael will be kindly taking that on in just a moment. 248 00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:36,340 But I wanted to actually ask you both questions, drawing on each other's presentations. 249 00:25:36,340 --> 00:25:45,880 So for Nadia, I'm just sort of wondering about if you can reflect on these comments about coercion that he's suggesting, actually. 250 00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:49,690 You said that there's a huge groundswell of interest in secular perspectives that are 251 00:25:49,690 --> 00:25:55,450 critical to the sort of really homogenous religious outlook that you read in the region. 252 00:25:55,450 --> 00:26:01,030 And you've lived and experienced yourself in the region, probably more so than myself or Chaddy. 253 00:26:01,030 --> 00:26:08,500 But Shaddy presenting statistics that suggest that there's not enough popularity of those perspectives. 254 00:26:08,500 --> 00:26:16,390 And ultimately, when states want to assert themselves, they use coercion and crush people who are Islamist. 255 00:26:16,390 --> 00:26:20,830 So that would be my question for yourself and for Shaddy drawing on Nadja's. 256 00:26:20,830 --> 00:26:24,090 It's around a bunch of both together, Ali, up there. 257 00:26:24,090 --> 00:26:31,300 It is obviously an extremely influential figure in terms of like the discourse that he inaugurated, and that is a powerful force. 258 00:26:31,300 --> 00:26:36,850 And there are forms of secular discourses that result in the sorts of people like Nasser Abuzaid, 259 00:26:36,850 --> 00:26:41,530 who are driven out by an ostensibly sort of secular, modern nation state. 260 00:26:41,530 --> 00:26:46,090 So I think you made the point that Sisi isn't really a secular figure, 261 00:26:46,090 --> 00:26:52,540 but does that not indicate a kind of problem in terms of the kinds of things that can be tolerated within within a state? 262 00:26:52,540 --> 00:26:56,980 So it's alright. I'll start with Nadia and then Shadi, if you could take him from there. 263 00:26:56,980 --> 00:27:00,790 And we welcome your questions as ever. If you want to ask questions, please do. 264 00:27:00,790 --> 00:27:04,750 And Michael, we'll take that on in just a moment. Thank you. 265 00:27:04,750 --> 00:27:17,560 So I agree with Chaddy that there needs to be a system that allows both these voices to coexist and to compete for people's hearts and minds. 266 00:27:17,560 --> 00:27:25,750 The thing is, I mean, if I may share, I hear and maybe I'm not hearing this right, that regimes are very coercive and there's no question about it. 267 00:27:25,750 --> 00:27:34,630 Nobody will argue that regimes are coercive, but Islamists are just as equally, I would even argue, just as equally coercive as regimes. 268 00:27:34,630 --> 00:27:48,040 And in fact, I even believe that it was because a lot of people have seen multiple versions and reiterations of an Islamic state, whether etc., Abia, 269 00:27:48,040 --> 00:27:56,440 Iran, the Islamic State, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Muslim mother in Egypt were anything but inclusive in writing the constitution of Egypt. 270 00:27:56,440 --> 00:28:02,920 They were arresting journalists. They were trying to coerce. So they had the same exact methodology there. 271 00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:09,090 I was watching a lot of their television stations. They were inciting violence. 272 00:28:09,090 --> 00:28:14,130 Truly, I I really believe that a lot of the people who felt terror that, oh my goodness, 273 00:28:14,130 --> 00:28:19,260 these people were just going to sit down so so that the regimes and Islam is to have a lot of that violence. 274 00:28:19,260 --> 00:28:28,650 In fact, in common and that exclusivity, the regime is just pure authoritarianism and Islam and Islamists, in addition to the authoritarian trend, 275 00:28:28,650 --> 00:28:35,310 they're holier than thou because they are they represent God versus, you know, others representing the devil, however. 276 00:28:35,310 --> 00:28:43,830 But from my reading of the voices that want separation, it is like Shaddy said, 277 00:28:43,830 --> 00:28:49,420 there's anticlerical and because they've seen all sorts of political interpretations. 278 00:28:49,420 --> 00:28:57,460 But I would not say that those who are calling for separation between politics and religion, they actually want to coerce against religion. 279 00:28:57,460 --> 00:29:03,070 In fact, the opposite. Like, if you read again, this rabbi said he believes they should be able to rule, 280 00:29:03,070 --> 00:29:07,660 but there should be a mechanism for them to be voted out if they don't deliver. 281 00:29:07,660 --> 00:29:11,590 I mean, that's a problem. Islam is don't want to be voted out. They just want to be voted in. 282 00:29:11,590 --> 00:29:18,100 So I think the region does need a democracy that allows for these two very 283 00:29:18,100 --> 00:29:23,080 important voices in the Muslim majority countries to compete and others as well. 284 00:29:23,080 --> 00:29:27,070 But definitely sharing of power. This is good. 285 00:29:27,070 --> 00:29:30,390 I think we have we'd have planned some contrasting perspectives here. So let's do it. 286 00:29:30,390 --> 00:29:37,300 Let's get into this. So I think if we're talking about Egypt for a moment, 287 00:29:37,300 --> 00:29:47,110 what we know about secularists or liberals is that the vast majority of them supported the 2013 military coup. 288 00:29:47,110 --> 00:29:53,170 Not only that, the vast majority of them supported the worst mass killing in modern Egyptian history. 289 00:29:53,170 --> 00:30:04,480 What this tells us is that, again, so-called these liberals or anti Islamists or whatever, they were not willing to play by the electoral rules. 290 00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:11,770 They weren't willing to wait for another election and to try to beat Mohammed Morsi and the Brotherhood through electoral means. 291 00:30:11,770 --> 00:30:17,170 And we used to play a game. It's actually a pretty dark game. And I'm not even sure the game is quite the right word. 292 00:30:17,170 --> 00:30:22,660 But after the coup, me and a few friends who were like, you know, watching what was happening in Egypt, 293 00:30:22,660 --> 00:30:31,270 we would try to count on one hand how many prominent liberals in the entire country of 100 million oppose the coup. 294 00:30:31,270 --> 00:30:39,700 We usually got to two or three individuals. That's how rare it was for liberals to actually uphold the democratic process. 295 00:30:39,700 --> 00:30:50,770 Now we have to ask ourselves why. Why do people who claim to believe in enlightenment principles and liberal ideals of tolerance and diversity? 296 00:30:50,770 --> 00:30:56,710 They claim they believe in these ideas, but then they tend to end up supporting military coups. 297 00:30:56,710 --> 00:31:01,900 I don't think this is a coincidence. I think the two are just OK. 298 00:31:01,900 --> 00:31:09,370 But I'll just finish on the other point on the Brotherhood. And there might be a little bit of a gap in how we perceived the Brotherhood. 299 00:31:09,370 --> 00:31:14,070 Look. I think Iran and Saudi Arabia don't really fit in the rubric, 300 00:31:14,070 --> 00:31:20,280 because in those cases we didn't have Islamist parties coming to power through democratic means. 301 00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:25,080 So I wouldn't want to put the Brotherhood or other Islamist parties that participate in the 302 00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:33,210 parliamentary process in the same bucket as a revolutionary context where and also a Shia context, 303 00:31:33,210 --> 00:31:35,520 which is different for a number of reasons. 304 00:31:35,520 --> 00:31:45,120 Now, the Brotherhood, I don't want to relitigate what happened in 2011 to 2013 when the Brotherhood was rising to power. 305 00:31:45,120 --> 00:31:52,710 Yes, the Brotherhood did not govern inclusively or as inclusively as it should have in the constitutional process. 306 00:31:52,710 --> 00:31:57,000 There was certainly overreach from Morsi and Morsi was the wrong person at the wrong time. 307 00:31:57,000 --> 00:32:02,820 And as someone who got to know Morsi, you know, individually and spend time with him before he became president, 308 00:32:02,820 --> 00:32:05,520 he's not exactly the person I would have gone for. 309 00:32:05,520 --> 00:32:14,550 That said, if we look at Egypt's modern history, 2011 to 2013 was the most democratic Egypt has ever been. 310 00:32:14,550 --> 00:32:24,510 It was a flawed experiment. It was a scary experiment. And I know because many of my friends and family in Egypt, I mean, born raised here in the US. 311 00:32:24,510 --> 00:32:31,560 But most my relatives are still in Egypt. They are pretty anti brotherhood and pro Sisi. 312 00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:37,320 And they would they would see me as a kind of interloper like, oh, now you're you're American. 313 00:32:37,320 --> 00:32:42,930 You're coming back to the country of your parents and you're trying to tell us how to live democratically. 314 00:32:42,930 --> 00:32:47,640 These people are dangerous. We want to get rid of them. And if that means through a coup, so be it. 315 00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:51,780 But I think that we still have to try to look objectively at this moment. 316 00:32:51,780 --> 00:33:01,500 And I think that the case is very strong, that this was a relative high point, despite its flaws or with all of its flaws. 317 00:33:01,500 --> 00:33:07,950 And my preference by very strong preference would have been that instead of supporting military coups, 318 00:33:07,950 --> 00:33:11,930 some of these liberals would have said, let's try to convince our fellow Egyptians. 319 00:33:11,930 --> 00:33:16,620 So next time around, we can get the Brotherhood's percentage in the polls down. 320 00:33:16,620 --> 00:33:20,910 But that's not what happened. And I don't know when Egypt will be able to recover from this. 321 00:33:20,910 --> 00:33:23,610 It could quite literally be decades. 322 00:33:23,610 --> 00:33:31,830 You know, if I may just say one point, you ask why I agree with you that it was the most democratic Egypt has been since early 20th century. 323 00:33:31,830 --> 00:33:37,920 And judging from what I've seen myself in the discourse that was coming out of Islamists, 324 00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:44,010 there was a lot of threat of violence that would terrify anybody, honestly. 325 00:33:44,010 --> 00:33:47,700 So the discourse. Terrorised people. 326 00:33:47,700 --> 00:33:56,440 I mean, this is the thing about a lot of Islam is they do not recognise how this threat of violence and terrorises people. 327 00:33:56,440 --> 00:34:00,660 That makes people think, OK, we'll take the army rather than have ISIS coming next. 328 00:34:00,660 --> 00:34:03,810 So even if Morsi himself maybe was not doing this, 329 00:34:03,810 --> 00:34:12,780 but there were a lot of his supporters that were really threatening ISIS like treatment of liberals, which make people basically it's it's survival. 330 00:34:12,780 --> 00:34:18,930 It's existential. And that's a problem of the discourse, because the discourse is not civil. 331 00:34:18,930 --> 00:34:24,300 The discourse is not. Hey, let's let the best idea win. Let us talk about issues. 332 00:34:24,300 --> 00:34:30,120 How do we we have serious issues in the Arab world. We have issues of economy, issues of environment. 333 00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:36,120 The discourse was not on what's the best idea. The discourse, especially with Islamists, is very quickly. 334 00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:40,610 Are we going to show these people we're going to essentially govern down? So, I mean, I've seen this. 335 00:34:40,610 --> 00:34:47,640 I'm sure you have seen a lot of videos of Islamists is very quickly turns threats of violence. 336 00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:55,950 And, of course, you know, then the regimes use that fear to do exactly what the Islamists say they would do to their opponents. 337 00:34:55,950 --> 00:35:02,190 But they're both, you know, using violence and there's no justification at all to violence. 338 00:35:02,190 --> 00:35:12,030 And the discourse I'm interested in actually is one that discredits violence as a mechanism in any shape or form to engage with any issue politically, 339 00:35:12,030 --> 00:35:19,540 socially, religiously, etc. Nadia, I would just say very quickly, I know that we want to move on to Q&A and all that, 340 00:35:19,540 --> 00:35:24,490 but the test of the Brotherhood's position on violence versus non-violence. 341 00:35:24,490 --> 00:35:31,720 We had that with the Sisi regime's repression. I think a lot of us fear that we could have at Algeria like situation the Brotherhood 342 00:35:31,720 --> 00:35:37,610 as hundreds of thousands of members and supporters and sympathisers in Egypt. 343 00:35:37,610 --> 00:35:43,900 It's what it is, the largest mass movement in the country. But we didn't see a mass turn to violence. 344 00:35:43,900 --> 00:35:47,620 Why? I think one of the reasons is the Brotherhood, you know, 345 00:35:47,620 --> 00:35:54,400 counselled its members to the extent possible to not take up arms and start some kind of endless insurgency. 346 00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:59,440 Yes. Were there outbreaks of violence from people who left the Brotherhood fold and said enough is enough? 347 00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:06,010 Yes, but it's it's also, I think, a relief that when we might have expected a mass turn to violence, 348 00:36:06,010 --> 00:36:10,800 that's not actually what we saw despite very high levels of repression. 349 00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:14,240 I would just note that. OK. 350 00:36:14,240 --> 00:36:19,230 Thank you. Thank you both very much. We're going to now move to questions coming from the audience. 351 00:36:19,230 --> 00:36:23,250 They're coming in. They can fast in a number of them. Both of you. 352 00:36:23,250 --> 00:36:27,040 And individually, the first one is going to both with you. 353 00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:31,030 It comes from Metgasco here. Very nice of you to join us, Marty. 354 00:36:31,030 --> 00:36:37,500 And that is really interesting to see. To what extent is this debate on the pace of religion in the Arab world, 355 00:36:37,500 --> 00:36:44,580 certainly since the Arab Spring been influenced what happened in Iran, particularly with the revolution and thereafter? 356 00:36:44,580 --> 00:36:50,730 So that's for both of you. Nadia, please. You know, I actually would be interested what you think. 357 00:36:50,730 --> 00:36:57,840 But from what I've been monitoring, so Iran had almost almost a spring before the Arab Spring. 358 00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:06,390 And so when when the Arab Spring started, there was a lot of Facebook pages and Twitter accounts basically carrying the sentiment. 359 00:37:06,390 --> 00:37:09,930 We're not going to be like Iran. That was at the beginning of the Arab Spring. 360 00:37:09,930 --> 00:37:17,740 But I don't know honestly, because most of the media outlets in the Arab world are controlled by the regimes. 361 00:37:17,740 --> 00:37:26,960 So they're very polarised, whether they are pro Iran or against Iran. There's a huge polarisation that I think the average people are lost in that. 362 00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:30,200 Like, I don't know if I would think that there is. 363 00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:37,430 I haven't seen any, you know, that reach between people or intellectuals outside that polarisation in politics. 364 00:37:37,430 --> 00:37:40,150 I haven't seen much of that myself. 365 00:37:40,150 --> 00:37:49,210 So on this, I would say that, you know, having spent a lot of time with Brotherhood leaders and ordinary members in various countries, 366 00:37:49,210 --> 00:37:53,590 but mostly Egypt and Jordan, but also in Nahda, which is not technically brotherhood. 367 00:37:53,590 --> 00:38:01,180 In Tunisia, very rarely. And I started doing my my interviews in, I guess, 2004, 2005. 368 00:38:01,180 --> 00:38:11,410 So over this long period of time, it's been remarkable to me how rarely Iran has been brought up as a model to emulate of anything. 369 00:38:11,410 --> 00:38:14,680 It tends to come up as a cautionary note of going too far. 370 00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:17,920 Now, there was a period in the 80s, you know, 371 00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:25,750 more recently after the revolution where some brotherhood linked individuals saw Iran in a positive light and rushed on. 372 00:38:25,750 --> 00:38:30,430 Nucci is one example of this. So the notion is more kind of confrontational phase. 373 00:38:30,430 --> 00:38:36,910 In the 80s, he like the language of Khomeini and others and share yachtie of fighting for 374 00:38:36,910 --> 00:38:42,160 the dispossessed and the kind of anti imperialism narrative and all of that. 375 00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:47,950 But then, you know, she switches in the 90s and distances himself from the Iranian model. 376 00:38:47,950 --> 00:38:55,360 When he sees that you can't really say Iran is moving towards democracy and we can have a debate about double discourse, 377 00:38:55,360 --> 00:39:02,290 to what extent Islamists are sincere when they say they believe in procedural democracy. 378 00:39:02,290 --> 00:39:04,210 I don't want to get into that too much. 379 00:39:04,210 --> 00:39:12,730 But even when people aren't even ordinary members so, one, you can you maybe expect that even if one gets to know Islamist leaders, 380 00:39:12,730 --> 00:39:16,510 there's still kind of trying to present themselves as moderate? 381 00:39:16,510 --> 00:39:24,880 But even but on the grassroots level, I never saw much evidence that Iran had any hold on the Brotherhood's imagination. 382 00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:29,200 Also, it's a little bit of a tough fit because there are major differences. 383 00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:33,460 I mean, Iranian Islamists are very clerical in their orientation. 384 00:39:33,460 --> 00:39:42,010 As is obvious, I think I've generally seen the Brotherhood, at least in Egypt, as being maybe not anticlerical, but non-clerical. 385 00:39:42,010 --> 00:39:47,740 If you look at their senior leadership, there are very few clerics who play any real role. 386 00:39:47,740 --> 00:39:52,720 It's primarily doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers and so on. 387 00:39:52,720 --> 00:39:57,970 So this is not a movement that's known for deep theological insight coming from clerics, 388 00:39:57,970 --> 00:40:04,200 which is very different to the clerical deference model that we see in Iran. 389 00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:10,070 Thank you very much. There's a question specifically the Shaadi, but I'd be interested to see both of yours response to this. 390 00:40:10,070 --> 00:40:14,520 It's a very interesting question coming from Christopher Wheeldon. Christopher asks. 391 00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:19,560 We have heard about how religion affects politics in the Middle East after the Arab Spring, 392 00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:26,430 but how the politics of the last 10 to 20 years changed political Islam and Islamism over the same period, 393 00:40:26,430 --> 00:40:28,600 particularly in terms of its methods and ideas. 394 00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:34,410 It's almost like not religion in politics or what has politics done for religion, in particular, Islamism. 395 00:40:34,410 --> 00:40:39,580 So shoddy, first of all. And if you wanted to weigh in on that, Nadia would be most welcome. 396 00:40:39,580 --> 00:40:45,430 So sometimes I use a conceptual definition for mainstream Islamism, which gets at this tension, 397 00:40:45,430 --> 00:40:53,950 sometimes I describe it as the attempt to reconcile premodern Islamic law with the modern nation state. 398 00:40:53,950 --> 00:41:00,640 Now, the problem is they're hard to reconcile. Islam was not revealed in a time of nation states. 399 00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:07,090 So naturally, Islam is not going to speak to our Westphalian dilemmas. 400 00:41:07,090 --> 00:41:10,780 And there's not a whole lot we can do about that in the corpus of Islamic law. 401 00:41:10,780 --> 00:41:16,750 Also developed in a premodern period where, again, nation states were not the primary unit. 402 00:41:16,750 --> 00:41:26,080 What mainstream Islamists want to use this term, mainstream Islamists, I'm referring primarily to brotherhood or Brotherhood inspired organisations. 403 00:41:26,080 --> 00:41:34,590 They tried to square the circle. Now, the problem when you're trying to square the circle with something as powerful as the state. 404 00:41:34,590 --> 00:41:45,060 The state might end up changing you. And I think that one critique of Brotherhood movements is that they become too enamoured by the nation state. 405 00:41:45,060 --> 00:41:46,980 They can't see beyond the state. 406 00:41:46,980 --> 00:41:56,520 And I think this was very clear during the Arab Spring when despite maybe their earlier and better judgement of not contesting the presidency, 407 00:41:56,520 --> 00:41:59,160 they became obsessed with capturing the state. 408 00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:07,980 And they saw the state as the means to achieve their Islamic project, which, of course, was rather vague and undefined. 409 00:42:07,980 --> 00:42:14,460 And this obsession with state power is something that I think has hurt Islamists quite a bit. 410 00:42:14,460 --> 00:42:22,170 And it is, I think, encouraging to see some younger Brotherhood members in exile, whether in Europe or in Turkey or Doha, 411 00:42:22,170 --> 00:42:28,260 understanding that this was a mistake that Morsi and other senior Brotherhood leaders made. 412 00:42:28,260 --> 00:42:33,790 They rushed. They what they saw this state as a prise and they started to have tunnel vision. 413 00:42:33,790 --> 00:42:40,350 And I think also another example of this is when so Brotherhood movements use Moslehi arguments, 414 00:42:40,350 --> 00:42:44,580 a lot of public interest arguments where they can basically be like, 415 00:42:44,580 --> 00:42:51,540 oh, well, this would technically violate Islamic law, like taking a loan from the World Bank or the IMF. 416 00:42:51,540 --> 00:42:57,690 But they couldn't get around that theologically by using these very general, vague Moslehi arguments. 417 00:42:57,690 --> 00:42:59,250 And this goes back to the point I made, 418 00:42:59,250 --> 00:43:06,690 that because they don't have a strong clerical role in their movements and because they're not very theologically or legally strong, 419 00:43:06,690 --> 00:43:13,530 you don't go to the Brotherhood for advice on Islamic law. You go to the Brotherhood for getting out the vote. 420 00:43:13,530 --> 00:43:21,840 That's what the Brotherhood does really well, internal discipline organisation, hierarchy, leadership delegation, so on and so forth. 421 00:43:21,840 --> 00:43:28,860 So I think this has become the major intellectual deficit with Brotherhood movements is that they're not 422 00:43:28,860 --> 00:43:35,080 theoretically rich and they're not theologically rich and they deferred too much to the nation state. 423 00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:46,440 You know, it's very interesting. Ironically, intellectually speaking, both liberal thinkers like Abuzaid, like his whole class to be damaged. 424 00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:53,610 A lot of them also like looked down upon the whole political class because they want modernity in some ways. 425 00:43:53,610 --> 00:43:57,810 But the is a lot harder because they actually have an Islamic model. 426 00:43:57,810 --> 00:44:03,060 And yet a lot of it's very hard core pillars, really. 427 00:44:03,060 --> 00:44:07,590 They do not, like you said, that you're trying to square a circle. They don't quite fit. 428 00:44:07,590 --> 00:44:11,280 And this is what the impossible state by Halep. 429 00:44:11,280 --> 00:44:17,740 What he tried to argue that basically it's an impossibility to have an Islamic state with a nation state. 430 00:44:17,740 --> 00:44:25,010 It's based on a different paradigm. The nation state is is based on every individual as a participant. 431 00:44:25,010 --> 00:44:28,860 So as an individual, I have rights. I have duties as well. 432 00:44:28,860 --> 00:44:33,570 But inverses the rights of the religion, Islam. 433 00:44:33,570 --> 00:44:40,560 So it's a very different two different paradigms. One puts men, if you would, at the centre and the other puts a the centre. 434 00:44:40,560 --> 00:44:45,330 So it was more important. A lot of. So with the nation state is very clear its people. 435 00:44:45,330 --> 00:44:50,660 I cannot just get rid of Saudi because I don't like how it's not. 436 00:44:50,660 --> 00:44:54,230 Thank you very much. I'm going to combine a couple of questions on a similar theme. 437 00:44:54,230 --> 00:45:01,520 Really looking at the extent to which we may have seen Islamism decline since the Arab Spring. 438 00:45:01,520 --> 00:45:06,200 I mean, in Egypt, effectively, the Muslim Brotherhood had been decimated. 439 00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:11,030 And whether that's a sort of reality or just the over the power state has led to, 440 00:45:11,030 --> 00:45:17,600 it has actually been a decline in support for the Brotherhood, as Shadi said, didn't fight back in quite the same way. 441 00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:21,490 But you've also seen in other countries and it comes with Catherine Adella. 442 00:45:21,490 --> 00:45:27,950 Caller's question about we've seen in somewhere like Tunisia whether or not a movement against Shadi said not quite a Brotherhood party, 443 00:45:27,950 --> 00:45:35,780 but certainly a much broader family and related has seen its support shrink at successive elections in Tunisia. 444 00:45:35,780 --> 00:45:41,250 So, first of all, is there this decline in support, particularly for Brotherhood parties? 445 00:45:41,250 --> 00:45:45,890 And what does that say about the place of religion? Does it mean people are moving away from that? 446 00:45:45,890 --> 00:45:52,810 Or is it the sort of thing that Brotherhood Islamist parties are offering is no longer as attractive as it once was on the eve of the Arab Spring? 447 00:45:52,810 --> 00:45:59,690 So to both of you, if I may start. So there are two reasons for the decline of Islamists. 448 00:45:59,690 --> 00:46:09,350 One is because of the authoritarian practises of regimes, which goes in cycles like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is a very good examples. 449 00:46:09,350 --> 00:46:17,510 Every time the Mubarak regime, for example, would would really come down on the Islamists, on the Brotherhood, they would have a decline temporarily. 450 00:46:17,510 --> 00:46:23,450 And that decline. I'm not worried about this. If I was an Islamist, I wouldn't worry about it because oppression. 451 00:46:23,450 --> 00:46:26,690 There's something else that pushes the party underground. 452 00:46:26,690 --> 00:46:36,410 And it actually furthers a lot of the old hoax in the basically that the hard liners to to really just follow the blindly. 453 00:46:36,410 --> 00:46:36,590 I mean, 454 00:46:36,590 --> 00:46:43,880 that there was a crisis within the Muslim Brotherhood during the Arab Spring and a lot of former Brotherhood wrote books like I read seven of them. 455 00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:47,250 So there must have been a whole avalanche of them. 456 00:46:47,250 --> 00:46:57,130 But the other decline, which I think has the most significance going forward, is a decline, again at the level of ideas. 457 00:46:57,130 --> 00:47:05,400 So at the level a decline because of persuasion, a decline because they weren't able to put forth a persuasive model. 458 00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:14,670 And I think it's, again, fascinating that Tunisia was able to have a constitution that has no Sharia. 459 00:47:14,670 --> 00:47:19,530 It's based on liberal human rights. Women can marry infidels, for example. 460 00:47:19,530 --> 00:47:25,260 They're Muslim without their husbands converting to Islam. Freedom of thought, freedom of conscience. 461 00:47:25,260 --> 00:47:29,580 I mean, it's a very unprecedented kind of constitution in Tunisia. 462 00:47:29,580 --> 00:47:37,800 We see even like those headlines in Sudan, after 30 years of Islamist rule, there's a separation between politics and religion. 463 00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:49,740 I mean, again, it's in the early stages. But I think that idea of civic state and the idea that I think there is a growing. 464 00:47:49,740 --> 00:47:56,760 Circulation of debates that Islamists are not really an Islamic state cannot 465 00:47:56,760 --> 00:48:01,830 really address the challenges of the 21st century because they're too outdated. 466 00:48:01,830 --> 00:48:08,700 It doesn't mean, again, Islam. Well, we've begun far from it. I mean, even in the US or Europe, there's still very strong religious people. 467 00:48:08,700 --> 00:48:15,900 But it does mean that there is a growing, growing minority and a minority doesn't have to be ineffective. 468 00:48:15,900 --> 00:48:23,490 I mean, the Middle East has been ruled by minorities for centuries. So I wonder where that debate will take the Middle East. 469 00:48:23,490 --> 00:48:29,970 I'm not sure that Islamism has as much promise as it used to before. 470 00:48:29,970 --> 00:48:35,420 It has multiple reiterations that people could see in the Middle East. 471 00:48:35,420 --> 00:48:37,370 So I actually agree with Nadia on this, 472 00:48:37,370 --> 00:48:47,750 that I definitely think that there is some souring towards Islamist models of various sorts and certainly towards the 473 00:48:47,750 --> 00:48:53,510 Brotherhood model because ultimately the Brotherhood model didn't work out so well and people feel burned by it. 474 00:48:53,510 --> 00:48:59,120 And even former Brotherhood members and, you know, I've been trying to interview sort of brotherhood, 475 00:48:59,120 --> 00:49:03,830 but also X Brotherhood folks in east in Istanbul, where many of them currently are, 476 00:49:03,830 --> 00:49:08,540 and many of them have decided to leave the Brotherhood and some of them have even become, 477 00:49:08,540 --> 00:49:12,740 you know, secular in certain ways or liberal and so on and so forth. 478 00:49:12,740 --> 00:49:19,040 I wouldn't want to overstate how big that group is, but there's certainly a sense that something didn't go right. 479 00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:26,060 That said, I think what we've learnt from previous iterations of this is that even if you decimate Islamists and they 480 00:49:26,060 --> 00:49:32,780 have no organisational structures and you have a strong secular culture like in Tunisia in the 1990s, 481 00:49:32,780 --> 00:49:39,170 Islamist groups can bounce back very quickly because of their built in advantage when it comes to organising. 482 00:49:39,170 --> 00:49:44,870 And they know how to run elections. Liberals might have some interesting intellectual ideas. 483 00:49:44,870 --> 00:49:51,680 They're not great at like knocking on doors. And sometimes that can really make the difference. 484 00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:55,960 Internal discipline matters a lot. The brother you know, the Brotherhood leadership. 485 00:49:55,960 --> 00:50:00,410 It can say to its supporters and followers, hey, vote for these candidates. 486 00:50:00,410 --> 00:50:05,330 But with liberals, you have a very fragmented space. They compete with each other. 487 00:50:05,330 --> 00:50:12,830 And that's one reason that even though a knot has gone down in its support in Tunisia, it's still the largest single party in parliament. 488 00:50:12,830 --> 00:50:17,810 There's an interesting debate in Tunisia now inside of Islamist circles. 489 00:50:17,810 --> 00:50:28,340 That is the reason that Anada has lost support because they're Islamist or because they they've deemphasizes their Islamist origins. 490 00:50:28,340 --> 00:50:35,960 And now it's harder to distinguish between them and other parties because I know she doesn't talk that much about Islam or Sharia. 491 00:50:35,960 --> 00:50:44,570 Definitely not Sharia anymore. And this wing of the party, if we want to call them doves versus hawks or something like that, the doves, 492 00:50:44,570 --> 00:50:52,160 which is now the vast majority of the party, they have dominated and they've moved in a very particular direction. 493 00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:59,000 So you might have voters who say, well, what's the point of voting for ANADA if they're not even that Islamist anymore? 494 00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:05,720 Because part of the trick in voting or elections is that you've got to have differentiation between parties. 495 00:51:05,720 --> 00:51:09,840 And the question is, is it not, that doing a good job of that now? 496 00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:10,130 You know, 497 00:51:10,130 --> 00:51:20,150 I want to point out something that I think is is missing and we need to take it into consideration in looking at the secularists versus Islamists, 498 00:51:20,150 --> 00:51:28,660 is that Islam is to have tremendous, tremendous funding to have schools and to have clinics, whereas liberals, 499 00:51:28,660 --> 00:51:35,900 they don't have the funding and liberals, you know, Islamists can can take money from the Gulf states, can take money from wealthy Gulf people, 500 00:51:35,900 --> 00:51:44,700 whereas liberals do not have that advantage so that they are really the winning up to a quarter of people that are identifying as basically. 501 00:51:44,700 --> 00:51:48,140 No, I do not even identify anymore. I wasn't. 502 00:51:48,140 --> 00:51:58,490 That is entirely made and accomplished through persuasion with active clinics and schools and funding and satellite channels night and day. 503 00:51:58,490 --> 00:52:04,600 So given the disparity in support, it's really, you know, what will it be? 504 00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:08,490 They had even support. I'm not so sure. Right. 505 00:52:08,490 --> 00:52:11,190 We have time for one last question, 506 00:52:11,190 --> 00:52:18,830 and it comes to both of you from Noma and no more would also be interested in knowing how how to access your work, Nadia. 507 00:52:18,830 --> 00:52:23,710 So that's no mother nowhere asks basically about. We talk a lot mainly about the Brotherhood. 508 00:52:23,710 --> 00:52:27,180 But is the future now? What about the Salafi movement? 509 00:52:27,180 --> 00:52:32,490 Is this where things are moving? Is this a future? Is this a new development or is it something else? 510 00:52:32,490 --> 00:52:36,900 Briefly, if you could, both of you. Michael, I'm sorry. Would you please say that again? 511 00:52:36,900 --> 00:52:42,480 Rob, I see the role of Salafis. And we've seen you've just mentioned about the Brotherhood possibly be in decline. 512 00:52:42,480 --> 00:52:48,570 Is Salafis and actually the new and interesting and dynamic part of Islamism, or is it something else? 513 00:52:48,570 --> 00:52:54,150 So I assume what she means, Salafism, is basically the piety without religion that there's multiple. 514 00:52:54,150 --> 00:53:03,900 I mean, when we come to the categories, they are very, very diverse and very one run of self ism is basically let us just let us not participate 515 00:53:03,900 --> 00:53:08,490 in politics and wait until the environment is conducive to us having an Islamic state. 516 00:53:08,490 --> 00:53:14,310 Until then, we stay away from politics. So it's very personal religiosity, if you would. 517 00:53:14,310 --> 00:53:20,880 I don't think that personal religiosity in Islam or other faiths will go anywhere any time soon in humanity. 518 00:53:20,880 --> 00:53:26,730 In fact, interestingly, even those that are leaving the faith altogether are having a different kind of spirituality. 519 00:53:26,730 --> 00:53:28,050 But just as urgent. 520 00:53:28,050 --> 00:53:38,430 Whether it's converted to Christianity or some Buddhism or a form of spirituality without labels, which in fact is the largest growing in the world. 521 00:53:38,430 --> 00:53:44,070 The spirituality without religion, like basically this very individualistic, inward looking. 522 00:53:44,070 --> 00:53:53,370 So I don't think it's going to go anywhere. But I really would be incredibly shocked if that Salafism becomes ever again a majority 523 00:53:53,370 --> 00:53:58,650 of the population giving the competition over ideas and the access to social media, 524 00:53:58,650 --> 00:54:02,370 access to modern ideas that, you know, you're young, 525 00:54:02,370 --> 00:54:09,330 you don't look to Iran or Saudi as an Islamic state or any as the place where you'd want want to live and have freedoms. 526 00:54:09,330 --> 00:54:14,820 And so then they don't offer attractive virgins. I doubt that the future. 527 00:54:14,820 --> 00:54:19,830 But I don't think they disappear. You know, just a very quick get on that. 528 00:54:19,830 --> 00:54:27,960 I mean, Nadia captured some of the less political Salafis. It's also interesting to ask about Salafi parties. 529 00:54:27,960 --> 00:54:31,380 They aren't as active as they used to be during the Arab Spring. But, you know, 530 00:54:31,380 --> 00:54:37,290 I remember after the parliamentary elections when I was in Egypt in early 2012 531 00:54:37,290 --> 00:54:42,820 and the results are finalised and the Noor Party or the Noor Parties Coalition. 532 00:54:42,820 --> 00:54:48,810 So the Salafi coalition won a remarkable portion of the vote, close to 27 percent. 533 00:54:48,810 --> 00:54:53,550 And I remember that, like all my like secular elite family members were like, OK, 534 00:54:53,550 --> 00:54:57,810 we kind of knew about the Brotherhood, but we really didn't know our country. 535 00:54:57,810 --> 00:55:03,630 If there's twenty seven percent of our countrymen and women who are going for these crazy Salafi types. 536 00:55:03,630 --> 00:55:10,620 I think the Noor party has lost a lot of support because it supported the coup and Sisi and it hasn't got a lot in return. 537 00:55:10,620 --> 00:55:12,090 You know, it's an interesting question. 538 00:55:12,090 --> 00:55:19,110 If there is a political opening, whether they can whether Salafis can try to position themselves as an alternative to the Brotherhood and say, 539 00:55:19,110 --> 00:55:24,210 look, we tried the Brotherhood already. That didn't work out so well. 540 00:55:24,210 --> 00:55:28,170 Salafi, you know, that that might be part of how they approach it. 541 00:55:28,170 --> 00:55:35,250 It's really hard to anticipate these things. Part of the problem with having so many authoritarian regimes in authoritarian societies, 542 00:55:35,250 --> 00:55:39,360 we don't have a clear sense of what people's natural inclinations are. 543 00:55:39,360 --> 00:55:47,640 We do have polling, but obviously a lot of this polling is happening with very high levels of fear and perhaps self-censorship. 544 00:55:47,640 --> 00:55:54,960 So, for example, if you're polling people on the Brotherhood in Egypt, I mean, you're probably not the most honest answer. 545 00:55:54,960 --> 00:56:00,360 And Salafis probably to some extent as well, which is why oftentimes I go back. 546 00:56:00,360 --> 00:56:08,430 You know, we go back to the question of political opening and democracy that changes so many of the variables and so many 547 00:56:08,430 --> 00:56:14,580 new new factors will be introduced if there is a political opening in Egypt that we're going to have to reassess. 548 00:56:14,580 --> 00:56:23,260 I think a lot of our starting premises, because it's going to be a very fluid situation once again, just as it was in 2011. 549 00:56:23,260 --> 00:56:29,410 Chaddy, thank you very much and thank you so much, Nadia. I mean, this has really been a great session because you've really bounced off each other. 550 00:56:29,410 --> 00:56:33,040 There's been a lot of dynamic discussion, and I think our viewers have thoroughly enjoyed it. 551 00:56:33,040 --> 00:56:37,000 We apologise to you that we still have 20 questions actually pending. 552 00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:42,550 So we really apologise. But I hope that this has been very fascinating discussion. 553 00:56:42,550 --> 00:56:48,050 And indeed, there is a wonderful debate element to this as well. And I think a lot of us learnt a lot. 554 00:56:48,050 --> 00:56:52,300 I'll leave you at this point to that. And I look forward to staying in touch with you. 555 00:56:52,300 --> 00:56:57,640 And for everyone else, please do join us. Next week. We're going to have a couple of wonderful scholars. 556 00:56:57,640 --> 00:56:59,020 And again, a think tank. 557 00:56:59,020 --> 00:57:05,980 And I will go Mattie and Mary Fitzgerald talking about Libya, where roughly exactly ten years on from the start of the Libyan uprising. 558 00:57:05,980 --> 00:57:10,240 So we really look forward to having you there. And until then, stay safe. 559 00:57:10,240 --> 00:57:14,380 Take care. Thank you, Emma. Thank you. Thanks very much. 560 00:57:14,380 --> 00:57:21,679 Great to see you.