Islamist radicalisation the challenge for euro-mediterranean relations

4 | R
OBERT 
S
PRINGBORG
 
that was widely seen to favour Hadas, that grouping saw its parliamentary 
bloc reduced to three seats as the Salafists recorded their best ever results.
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The recent political record of moderate Islamists is clear. Their 
electoral performance is in decline, while their capacities appear to be 
eroding as a result of sustained governmental pressure. In Morocco, 
Kuwait, Algeria and Yemen the existence of yet more radical Islamist 
political organisations may account for the enervation of ‘establishment’ 
political Islam as it is increasingly seen as having been co-opted and lost its 
effectiveness. In Egypt and Jordan, where more radical Islamist 
organisations apparently have been marginalised, the downward 
trajectories of the MB and the IAF, coupled with internal restiveness and 
radicalisation, result primarily from intensifying struggles with the regime, 
although disaffection with the MB and IAF is also manifest among the 
Egyptian and Jordanian wider publics. Why then have the bright hopes of 
moderate Islamists failed to materialise? And what are the reactions to this 
failure? 
A single, over-arching explanation of failure might be referred to as 
‘democratisation fatigue’, a notion that encompasses several elements. First 
and most importantly, regimes have grown leery of the liberalisation 
strategies that they formerly pursued and to which moderate Islamists 
responded by focusing their organisational energies on the political system 
and specifically electoral politics. While the causes of regime anxiety vary 
from country to country, the most common one is the very success of these 
moderate Islamists in mobilising support in opposition to incumbent 
regimes. That success has deterred further liberalisation and in most of the 
republics has caused it to be rolled back. For their part, Arab publics, ever 
alert to the signals sent by their rulers, have come to believe that the path to 
power will never lie through free and fair elections, so why waste time with 
them and organisations seeking to follow that path.  
                                                      
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 On the recent Kuwaiti elections, see N.J. Brown, “Kuwait’s 2008 Parliamentary 
Elections: A Setback for Democratic Islamism”, Web Commentary, Carnegie 
Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C., May 2008. Brown 
concludes by observing, “Kuwait’s HADAS has managed in less than two decades 
to emerge as the Arab Islamist party most thoroughly integrated as a normal 
political actor. Its leaders are frustrated because they feel that in a sense they have 
become more democratic than the political system in which they operate – and 
perhaps more than Kuwaiti society is ready for.” 

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I
S THE 
EU
 CONTRIBUTING TO RE
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RADICALISATION
?
 
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The regional context within which de-liberalisation dramas have been 
played out in the Arab republics reinforces democratisation fatigue. Much 
faith had been placed in the willingness and ability of the Bush 
administration to pressure rulers to democratise. That faith is now believed 
to have been misplaced. Simultaneously, the political successes of the 
national liberation Islamist movements, namely Hizbullah and Hamas – 
with the former fighting Israel to a draw in 2006 and imposing its will on 
the 14 March-backed government in May 2008, and the latter defeating 
Fatah in Gaza and continuing to resolutely confront Israel – suggest to 
many Arabs that a radical, rather than moderate approach pays greater 
political dividends. That Hizbullah’s and Hamas’s putative successes 
owing to their hard-line positions occurred just when the soft lines taken by 
the MB, PJD, Hadas, IAF and Islah were seen to have led nowhere, 
reinforced the view that moderation is ineffective.  
Reactions to democratisation fatigue among Islamists include voter 
apathy, organisational fissures and radicalisation. Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, 
Jordan, Yemen and Kuwait have all witnessed declining electoral 
performances of moderate Islamists. A recrudescence of Islamist violence 
has occurred in Algeria, Lebanon and Yemen, while the growing appeal of 
more fundamentalist Islamists has affected recent elections in Morocco and 
Kuwait. Moderate Islamists, in sum, confront serious challenges. Although 
organisational fissures vary in intensity and type from country to country, 
what seems common is an old guard–young guard schism, which is most 
manifested in Egypt. The basic indictment of the MB leadership by many 
youthful Brothers is that they simply are not politically hip. If the strategy 
is to compete for power by traditional democratic means augmented by 
mobilisation of the street in non-violent protests, then the organisation has 
itself to be more democratic, flexible, policy literate, engaged and capable 
of winning the hearts and minds of the ‘Facebookiyyin’, that new category 
of hip, wired, politically engaged youths, many of whom are Islamists. 
Interestingly, this schism is not unlike that which increasingly is dividing 
regimes as well, thus opening up the possibility of new coalitions that cross 
the heretofore-unbridgeable divide between government and opposition. 
But in the meantime, the pressure upon opposition Islamists is much 
greater than on incumbent regimes, for the former have also to bear the 
weight of oppression applied by the latter. So not surprisingly, there is 
more evidence of moderate Islamist organisations crumbling, including the 
general impression that the Islamist old guard is digging in against  
 

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