Mainstream media outlets often equate the predominance of authoritarian regimes and the continued influence of political Islam with a traditionalist model of the Middle East that depicts a region and crucially, a people, at odds with modernity. This view of a traditionalist, anti-modern Middle East is often juxtaposed with the “civilized people throughout the world” as Laura Bush put it when speaking of America’s responsibility to free Afghanis from those who threatened to “impose their world on the rest of us” (Abu Lughod, p. 784). Authoritarian regimes and the systems that sustain them rose in an era of state building in the early twentieth century. As nation states were thrust into the modern global order, Islamist movements opposed these regimes (Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood) or served as their foundation (al-Wahhabiyya in Saudi Arabia). In essence, this same “anti-modern” Middle East, with its repressive rule and Islamist movements, is very much a product of modernism and more specifically, the modern nation-state system.
To understand authoritarian rule, the environment it germinated in must first be explored. In the aftermath of World War I, imperialist powers like Britain and France relied heavily on the landholding notables of mandated territories (and Egypt) to maintain their interests during state-building endeavors throughout the Middle East. Adopting a model of indirect rule, these powers focused on preventing the emergence of nationalist movements amongst the growing masses of disgruntled commoners who resented the landholding elite and their foreign sponsors. However, the Great Depression highlighted the blatant rural inequality while World War II precipitated the rise of a class of migrant workers that shouldered the great wartime burden of industrial production. Meanwhile, political participation was limited for most while the ruling class simply served as agents of the policies proposed by their Western superiors (Bsheer, 7 November).
In Egypt, growing frustrations with the landholding elite’s perceived spinelessness in the face of British influence boiled over after the humiliating defeat in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (Cleveland, p. 302). A group of military officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar al-Sadat staged a coup in 1952 and established an authoritarian government that ruled for the next 29 years (Cleveland, p. 303-304). The Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) formed by these officers came to represent the lower and middle socioeconomic classes that resented British infringement on Egyptian affairs. With no predetermined plan for governance, however, the RCC employed reactionary means to 1) remove opposition for power and 2) rally popular support for their policies.
While most will highlight agrarian reform initiatives, economic nationalism, and pan-Arab unity in the face of intrusions by Cold War belligerents as defining features of Nasser’s legacy, his regime and the policies that succeeded him failed in one major way: political participation of the common population. Despite being one of the main grievances of the rural and urban masses, civilian political involvement was thoroughly discouraged and even eradicated. The RCC, led by Nasser, forced King Farouq to abdicate, replaced all civilian politicians with military officers in the bureaucracy, and severely punished the Muslim Brotherhood (to be discussed later) as well as all other political organizations (Cleveland, p. 306). Nasser sustained the populism that drove him to political prominence by establishing himself as a symbol of pan-Arab unity, adopting state capitalism, and sponsoring several social reforms. However, his incessant need to compensate for failures like the United Arab Republic experiment with foreign policy successes (that people lauded him for) led him incomprehensibly into the 1968 conflict with Israel (Cleveland, p. 314). The Egyptian defeat challenged the premise that Nasser’s absolutism, which had been propped up by popular support, had actually accomplished anything of substance for Egypt.
Eleven years into the reign of Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, operatives of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) assassinated Egypt’s president and thrust the organization back into the national scene after years of underground work during its exile by Nasser (Bsheer, 27 November). This assassination indeed paints the picture of hostility between the MB and Egypt’s central government that has come to dominate headlines today. However, it was not always this way. The grassroots MB movement led by Hassan al-Banna, which appealed mostly to poor and middle class Muslims who abhorred the ruling elite of Egypt, also gained similarly minded leaders like Sadat as allies in its early stages (Thompson, p. 151). It was only after years of exile and subsequent radicalization of certain factions of the MB that its main grievances shifted from imperialist powers and colonialism to the failure of secular politics to bring true independence and the broken promises following the era of economic nationalism (Bsheer, 27 November).
Having experienced the Wafd struggles of 1919, al-Banna aimed to fortify the bond that people shared with their Islamic faith, a bond he thought would protect them from the invasive influences of Christian missionaries and the overreaching imperial powers (Thompson, p. 155). Banna and his supporters embraced the Islamic modernist ideals of thinkers like Rashid Rida and rejected the secular nationalism of leaders like Mustafa Kemal in Turkey. The Brotherhood’s leaders linked their Islamic revival with anti-colonial overtures and honed in on their mission of making Egypt a “place for Arabs and Muslims” (Thompson, p. 159).
While the MB’s philanthropic projects disguised it as a charity, Banna and its thinkers continued on with their political activities. In his infamous letter to King Farouq in 1936, Banna outlines his proposals to modernize Islam and fight for Egypt’s sovereignty by making a clean break with European values (Thomspon, p. 163). While little gains were made with the corrupt ruling class, Banna continued to resist the urges of some MB factions towards militancy but eventually approved the establishment of battalions ready for action in case of continued corruption (Thomspon, p. 163). It was this gradual shift to armed revolution that came to taint Banna’s commitment to integrating Islam into the modern nation state system. Furthermore, his movement’s increasing belligerence against authoritarianism and its foreign sponsors over time has only landed it the precarious title of an anti-modernist movement in the eyes of the West.
While authoritarian rule and political Islam clash in Egypt today, the latter reinforces the former in Saudi Arabia. There, political Islam “took up a special role in the political economy of oil” while bolstering an authoritarian state with ample foreign sponsorship (Mitchell, p. 8). Unlike Egypt, Saudi Arabia never quite came under colonial rule. Abdulaziz ibn Saud built the Kingdom in the early twentieth century by conquest of local tribes and through the spread of Wahhabism, a puritanical Salafist movement that favored a return to the community model that Muhammad established in Mecca and Medina (Bsheer, 7 November). While many depict Saudis as apolitical, Saudi Arabia only became a “religiously legitimized, counter-revolutionary” state (with Wahhabism at the helm) after King Faisal’s defeat of his brother, Saud Abdulaziz bin Saud and the consequent shift from secular leftist organization to political Islam (Bsheer, p. 7). This account fails to fully encapsulate the leftist movements of leaders like Abdulaziz Ibn Muammar, who promoted civil liberties and championed constitutional democracy with the cooperation of Saud (Bsheer, p. 3). King Faisal crushed these movements (with the support of the United States) in the 1970s as control of oil production was the driving force behind this relationship. The United States government and the oil companies it represented employed their support of political Islam in an attempt to assert their dominance over the global oil economy. These companies did not maintain their relationship with Saudi Arabia out of necessity for supply but rather for its critical role in maintaining the system of oil scarcity that keeps oil prices high and maintains a steady revenue stream (Bsheer, p. 6). As Timothy Mitchell puts it, “It is an age in which the mechanisms of capitalism appear to operate…only by adopting the social force and moral authority of conservative Islamic Movements” (Mitchell, p. 3).
In Egypt, authoritarian rule and the Muslim Brotherhood both rose to prominence on the back of widespread anger towards the ruling elite’s favoritism towards the British. Once authoritarianism attempted to destroy the Brotherhood, it became increasingly hostile and its message became tainted with violence. Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, what began as a tolerant state comprised of tribes united under the umbrella of Wahhabism turned into one of authoritarian rule legitimized by conservative political Islam. While there is no general direct correlation between authoritarian rule and political Islam, these phenomena that ironically support “anti-modern” views of the Middle East are indeed direct byproducts of the modernist nation-state building that occurred i