Islamist radicalisation the challenge for euro-mediterranean relations

2 | R
OBERT 
S
PRINGBORG
 
that of contemporary Islamism within authoritarian Arab political systems, 
and to draw out some implications for possible EU strategies and 
programming.  
1.
 
Islamism’s responses to authoritarianism  
Moderate political Islamists face increased pressure throughout the Middle 
East and North Africa. In the most authoritarian states, including Libya, 
Syria and Tunisia, they have been provided absolutely no political space 
within which to operate. In Lebanon and Palestine, the confrontation with 
Israel, combined with the very nature of politics in weak states, has pushed 
political Islam into the methods and structures of national resistance 
organisations rather than non-violent political parties. In those non-Gulf 
states that have permitted the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) or its offshoot 
organisations to contest elections, including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, 
Algeria and Yemen, authoritarianism has weakened all oppositionists, 
including Islamists. In the Gulf, the picture is less clear. While in Saudi 
Arabia moderate Islamists have demonstrated their strength in those 
elections that have been permitted, in Kuwait the Muslim Brotherhood 
offshoot, the Islamic Constitutional Movement (Hadas), lost half of its seats 
in the May 2008 parliamentary elections, while the more rigid and devout 
Salafists and Shii groupings captured record shares of the vote. 
Paradoxically, it is only in Iraq where moderate Islamists, albeit of a highly 
sectarian character, seem to be making headway against jihadist Islamists 
and possibly also, in the case of Sunni Islamists, against a government 
reluctant to grant them much political leeway.  
The Islamist organisations most relevant to an assessment of the 
prospects of re-radicalisation are those that seemed to moderate their 
positions as part of their entry into competitive electoral politics, including 
those in the republics mentioned above and in Morocco, Jordan and 
Kuwait. They have all followed a similar trajectory of rising hope for their 
political prospects accompanying successful performance at the polls, 
followed by disillusionment occasioned either by deteriorating electoral 
appeal, being subject to harsh repression, or a combination of the two.  
Even before the final round of the three-stage parliamentary elections 
of 2005 in Egypt had finished, for example, it was made clear to the Muslim 
Brothers that the regime was going to reward their surprisingly successful 
performance in the initial round with increased repression, an approach 
that the government has followed since that time. In the 2008 local 
government elections, the MB failed to win a seat in the face of massive 

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intimidation.
2
 The high water mark for Jordan’s Islamic Action Front (IAF) 
was achieved in the comparatively free elections of 1989. Since that time its 
political hopes have receded as gerrymandering of election districts and 
generalised governmental pressure, further intensified under King 
Abdullah, has reduced the number of IAF deputies in successive elections 
by some two-thirds, so that in 2007 it won a mere six seats.
3
 Yemen’s al-
Islah Party reached the apogee of its electoral success in the 1993 elections, 
the first to be held after the 1990 unification, when it finished a reasonably 
close second to the regime’s own party, the General People’s Congress 
(GPC). Since that time, its position has been steadily eroded by the GPC, 
which with 238 seats now outnumbers the 46 Islah members of parliament 
by a margin of five to one. The Party for Justice and Development’s (PJD) 
electoral fortunes in Morocco have similarly stagnated. Breaking onto the 
electoral scene in the 1997 elections when it won 9 seats, it rapidly gained 
popularity and captured 42 in the 2002 elections. Although it managed to 
win 47 seats in the September 2007 elections, its share of the popular vote 
was only 14%, well below what had been anticipated. One explanation of 
this disappointing result, in addition to low voter turnout because of 
apathy, was the drift of supporters away from the PJD to Sheikh Abdel 
Salam Yassin’s Movement for Justice and Charity, an Islamist organisation 
that takes a harder line and refused to contest elections.
4
 In Kuwait, voters 
have a choice among Islamists, with the moderate, MB-affiliated Hadas on 
the conservative end of the spectrum and a grouping of Salafists towards 
the more radical end (at least in terms of personal beliefs and practices). In 
the 2008 elections, the first to be held on the basis of the new electoral law 
                                                      
2
 I. El Houdaiby contends that the post-2005 crackdown is empowering radicals 
within the MB. See his article, “Miscalculated Adventure”, Middle East Times, 6 
June 2008 (retrieved from 
http://www.metimes.com/Opinion/2008/06/06/ 
egypts_miscalculated_adventure/3667/
). 
3
 As in the case of Egypt, the combination of repression and declining electoral 
success of Jordan’s IAF is seen by close observers as empowering radicals within 
the organisation, as manifested in this case by the intense electoral struggle in the 
wake of the 2007 elections that saw the radical Hammam Sa’id win by one vote.  
4
 A. Hamzawy, “The 2007 Moroccan Parliamentary Elections: Results and 
Implications”, Web Commentary, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 
Washington, D.C., 7 September 2007 (
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/ 
publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=19569&prog=zgp&proj=zme
). 

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