Islamist radicalisation the challenge for euro-mediterranean relations

D
YNAMICS IN POLITICAL 
I
SLAM AND CHALLENGES FOR 
E
UROPEAN POLICIES 
|
 
173 
 
early electoral successes. But in recent years, they have been unable to 
increase their representation in parliaments. In addition, they have been 
unable to translate their participation into meaningful influence on their 
countries’ decision-making processes. As Robert Springborg argues, the 
entrenchment of authoritarianism and the increase in repression in the 
MENA region has weakened opposition actors, chiefly moderate Islamists.
5
 
This has been particularly evident in those countries that have allowed the 
Muslim Brotherhood or its offshoot organisations to contest elections, such 
as Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco and Yemen. In some cases 
(Morocco, Kuwait, Algeria and Yemen), the existence of Islamist political 
organisations that are more radical may also account for the weakening of 
the more established moderate Islamists, which have increasingly been 
viewed as having been co-opted and having lost their role as a clean 
alternative to the actors in power.
6
  
As a result, in many countries of the MENA region Islamist groups 
and their followers have become frustrated and disillusioned with electoral 
and parliamentary politics, as they have realised how constrained is the 
impetus they can have in the façade democracies of the region. This 
realisation has had quite diverse effects on Islamist movements and their 
constituencies. Among them, we have witnessed highly controversial, 
programmatic debates in some movements, e.g. the Egyptian Muslim 
Brotherhood’s debate on a draft platform.
7
 But above all, we have seen an 
increase in political apathy or a turn towards non-political, more quietest 
                                                                                                                                       
correspond with a European understanding of democracy. Here – as with other 
forces in the region – we can find instead a broad spectrum of approaches ranging 
from the ideological to the more pragmatic, from the socially conservative to the 
more progressive.  
5
 See the chapter by Robert Springborg, “Is the EU contributing to re-
radicalisation?” in the present volume. 
6
 Ibid. 
7
 The draft espoused socially conservative provisions, such as neither women nor 
Copts would be eligible to run for the presidency and a religious oversight body 
was to be established. It aroused a very controversial debate within the 
Brotherhood as well as among scholars and journalists, and it was subsequently 
relegated to the backburner. See the contribution by Ibrahim El Houdaiby in this 
volume, “Trends in political Islam in Egypt”. 

---

174 | M
URIEL 
A
SSEBURG
 
 
forms of Islam among Arab publics, such as Sufism (which has been 
encouraged by some regimes), as well as a growing appeal of more 
fundamentalist Islamists.  
Nevertheless, the lack of success in achieving any of their short- to 
medium-term objectives has not led moderate Islamists to turn away from 
participatory politics or to engage in violence.
8
 Most organisations have 
accepted that their room for manoeuvre is small and they have adapted 
their strategies to avoid openly challenging incumbent regimes and rather 
strengthened their commitment to working from within the respective 
political system. As Springborg concludes, “In sum, the real challenge may 
not be the rise to power of radical Islamists or violence committed by them, 
but the perpetuation and even strengthening of authoritarian rule as a 
result of moderate Islamists becoming strategic partners of at least some 
elements of incumbent regimes”.
9
 
EU policies and their effects 
In recent years, against the backdrop of Islamist terrorism on the one hand 
and election victories by moderate Islamists on the other, Europeans have 
become increasingly aware of the phenomenon of political Islam and of its 
diverse facets, as well as the need to develop policies for addressing the 
issue. In its 2004 position paper on a Strategic Partnership with the 
Mediterranean and the Middle East, the EU acknowledged for the first time, if 
only implicitly, that moderate Islamists should no longer be excluded from 
measures aimed at democracy promotion.
10
 A 2007 European Parliament 
resolution on reforms in the Arab World made this approach even more 
explicit, as it called on Europeans “to give visible political support 
to…those political organisations which promote democracy…including, 
                                                      
8
 For recent trends among moderate Islamists, see also Ana Echagüe, “The 
radicalisation of moderate Islamist parties: Reality or chimera?” in the present 
volume. 
9
 See Springborg, op. cit., p. 18. 
10
 European Council, Final Report on an EU Strategic Partnership with the 
Mediterranean and the Middle East, June 2004 (retrieved from 
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/Partnership%20Mediterra
nean%20and%20Middle%20East.pdf). 

---

D
YNAMICS IN POLITICAL 
I
SLAM AND CHALLENGES FOR 
E
UROPEAN POLICIES 
|
 
175 
 
where appropriate, secular actors and moderate Islamists”.
11
 In the 2005 
strategy document on Combating Radicalisation and Recruitment to Terrorism, 
the EU stressed “the need to empower moderate voices by engaging with 
Muslim organisations and faith groups that reject the distorted version of 
Islam put forward by al-Qa’ida and others”.
12
  
In practice, however, European engagement with Islamists has 
lagged far behind these ambitions.
13
 While some European governments 
have established specific divisions or task forces for dialogue with the 
Islamic world, these have often focused on religious and cultural issues 
rather than on politics. Such efforts have not succeeded in institutionalising 
channels of dialogue that would have helped to calm tensions in times of 
crisis, for instance during the uproar surrounding the Danish Muhammad 
cartoons. In addition, not only have debates on a common EU policy line as 
to with whom, how and when to engage not yielded results, but as Kristina 
Kausch details, for various reasons official representatives of European 
governments and the EU have also been very reluctant to establish regular 
contact and build relations with Islamist forces.
14
 When exchanges have 
taken place, they have generally been informal, bilateral and low profile.  
Europeans have established contacts with representatives of those 
Islamist parties that are legally recognised political actors with 
parliamentary representation, such as the Moroccan Party for Justice and 
Development, the Islamic Action Front, the Kuwaiti ICM and the Bahraini 
al-Wefaq. Yet they have been somewhat disinclined to establish such links 
– at least on an official level – with Islamists in countries that have regimes 
that discourage such contacts, e.g. in Algeria or Egypt. They have shunned 
official contacts in countries where Islamist parties are illegal, e.g. in 
Tunisia and Syria. Furthermore, even those forces with which Europeans 
are in contact have very rarely been supported by EU democracy 
promotion programmes or cooperation initiatives.  
                                                      
11
 This document is quoted in Kristina Kausch, “Europe’s engagement with 
moderate Islamists” in the present volume. 
12
 Also quoted in Kausch, supra. 
13
 Interestingly, European policies have also lagged behind US efforts at capacity 
and coalition building among opposition forces (including moderate Islamists) in 
some MENA countries, e.g. Yemen and Morocco. 
14
 See Kausch, op. cit. 

---

176 | M
URIEL 
A
SSEBURG
 
 
In the end, by not establishing and maintaining contacts with all 
relevant segments of society in the region and by not developing ties with 
moderate Islamist groups, Europeans have so far missed out on an 
opportunity to engage those groups that often form the most popular and 
best organised opposition. This has also meant that Europeans have had no 
instruments at their disposal to exert influence on debates within these 
movements or to work towards de-radicalisation. While Europeans have 
pushed for trade liberalisation and better governance, and engaged in civil 
society support, on the level of high politics they have closely collaborated 
with the MENA’s authoritarian rulers and been reluctant to press for 
sustained political liberalisation or to address human rights issues. They 
have thus contributed little to making participatory politics more attractive 
for the region’s opposition forces.  
Finally yet importantly, European policies have been highly 
contradictory with regard to contact with those forces that have military 
wings, i.e. the Lebanese Hizbullah and the Palestinian Hamas. Europeans 
do not face any legal impediments to speaking to and cooperating with 
Hizbullah representatives (except for the Dutch, who designated Hizbullah 
a terrorist group in 2004), as the EU does not consider Hizbullah a terrorist 
organisation; yet some European governments still have been reluctant to 
engage in official high-level contact. Nonetheless, as a rule, they have 
maintained open lines of communication with the party. By contrast, such 
lines have been cut with Hamas, which was designated a terrorist 
organisation by the EU in 2003. After Hamas’s landslide victory in the 2006 
elections, the international community adopted the so-called ‘Quartet 
criteria’, which conditioned diplomatic contacts and cooperation with the 
Hamas-led government on Hamas renouncing the use of violence, 
recognising Israel’s right to exist and accepting all previous agreements. In 
this regard, Europeans adopted a maximalist interpretation of what the 
designation of Hamas as a terrorist organisation was to mean: while they 
were not legally in a position to cooperate with Hamas financially and 
politically, it would not have been mandatory to adopt a policy of no 
contact as the EU did. Actually, through US influence, all Quartet members 
with the exception of Russia adopted an isolationist approach, and after 
Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip, backed the Israeli embargo – 
putting Gaza’s population under massive pressure to change its political 
preferences by imposing measures of collective punishment. As Europeans 
have toed the US policy line, they have contributed to empowering the 

---

D
YNAMICS IN POLITICAL 
I
SLAM AND CHALLENGES FOR 
E
UROPEAN POLICIES 
|
 
177 
 
hardliners in the movement, strengthening Hamas’s alliance with Iran and 
entrenching the geopolitical split between the West Bank and Gaza.  
Ultimately, the European stance on Hamas has not only contributed 
to the ‘re-radicalisation’ of Hamas and seriously undermined European 
efforts at state building in the Palestinian territories, but it has also done 
enormous damage to the credibility of the EU as a democracy promoter in 
the whole region. In general, failure to resolve the region’s conflicts, first 
and most importantly the Arab–Israeli conflict, has helped extremists thrive 
and mobilise around radical slogans. 
Main challenges and policy recommendations 
To date, there is no consensus among European policy-makers about which 
Islamist groups to engage with, the purposes of such engagement or how. 
In their contribution, Nona Mikhelidze and Nathalie Tocci specify three 
good reasons for engaging with Islamists: to better understand an 
important political force as well as realities in the region, to support 
political openings, and to include relevant actors and potential spoilers in 
peace processes or efforts at conflict management.
15
  
Indeed, a first  reason Europeans should engage with Islamists is to 
understand their thinking, priorities and agendas, as these forces are so 
relevant in their societies. Dialogue with Islamists would also help 
Europeans get an additional reading of realities in the Middle East – rather 
than just relying on the interpretations of those who think like they do or 
who speak in a manner to which they are accustomed. On top of that, 
dialogue should also be about building bridges. Europeans have a strong 
interest in reaching out and establishing channels of communication that 
diverge from the ‘us vs. them’ and ‘the West against Islam’ paradigms, not 
least because of geographical proximity and large Muslim minorities in 
some European states. Still, as Abdel-Latif points out, such dialogue will 
hardly be successful as long as one side dictates the agenda, rather than 
both sides meeting eye-to-eye.
16
 Nor will it resonate widely if European 
dialogue activities are not broadened to include major segments of society. 
                                                      
15
 See in the present volume the chapter by Nona Mikhelidze and Nathalie Tocci, 
“How can Europe engage with Islamist movements?”. 
16
 See Abdel-Latif, op. cit. 

---

178 | M
URIEL 
A
SSEBURG
 
 
It is in the European interest not to condition dialogue on certain criteria, 
but instead to have open lines of communication with a broad spectrum of 
social and political forces. 
A  second reason Europeans should engage with Islamists as well as 
with other societal and political forces is to support political change in the 
region. This would mean working towards more participatory and less 
repressive systems, with a view to preventing political apathy and 
radicalism and preparing the regimes for ‘soft landings’, while avoiding 
revolutionary upheavals – with all the negative side effects they could 
entail for Europe. Political liberalisation or even democratisation cannot be 
achieved if the mainstream forces of political Islam – in many countries of 
the region the only well-organised and most popular opposition – are 
excluded from the political process.  
If the European commitment to democracy is not mere lip service, 
Europeans should choose a three-dimensional approach. They should a) 
put pressure on incumbent regimes to abandon their repression of 
moderate Islamists and other peaceful opposition forces and grant all forces 
access to the political arena. They should b) aim at influencing the legal and 
political frameworks that regulate social and political participation in the 
MENA region. It is important not to set all one’s hope on domestic reform 
actors, but to try to affect change directly as well, not least because it is the 
also conditions under which actors participate in the system that shape 
their agendas and priorities. As the Turkish example shows, competitive 
political systems with established democratic procedures tend to support 
trends among Islamists that favour procedural democratic reform and 
acceptance of important tenets of liberal democracy. This would imply 
using the political tools available, such as the political dialogue provided 
for in the Association Agreement of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership as 
well as the Action Plans of the European Neighbourhood Policy, to address 
issues of governance along with human rights and civil liberties. 
Benchmarking, which to date has only been done in the areas of trade 
policy and economic reform, could likewise be implemented to affect 
human rights guarantees, to lift the states of emergency, to work towards 
liberal party and association laws, to install independent electoral 
commissions, and to grant freedom of opinion and assembly, etc. So far, we 
have not been able to see how much influence the EU and its member states 
 

---

D
YNAMICS IN POLITICAL 
I
SLAM AND CHALLENGES FOR 
E
UROPEAN POLICIES 
|
 
179 
 
could have in this regard, as European policy-makers have not used their 
political and economic weight to boost change. Thus, rather than focus 
training and capacity building activities on civil society actors, Europeans 
should c) increase cooperation with political opposition forces – Islamist as 
well as non-Islamist. Obviously, such activities would not embrace actors 
who engage in or propagate the use of violence. But they should not 
necessarily be restricted to the most progressive Islamists. Europeans 
should avoid being perceived as trying to pick winners and instead 
encourage participation across the board.
17
 
In this context, the EU should not simply be urging the earliest 
possible elections, but should rather push for legislation and political 
practice that would first allow for freedom of association and the formation 
of political parties. Where elections are held, Europe should signal in 
advance a clear interest in free and fair elections and offer to provide 
election observers. Even more importantly, of course, the EU should accept 
the outcome of such elections and refrain from undermining elected 
governments. As the Hamas case has shown, the international isolation of 
the ‘Islamic Resistance Movement’ has helped in no way to meet the 
challenges, but contributed a lot to making the situation worse. Again, 
dialogue with democratically elected governments should not be 
conditioned.  
A  third  reason  Europeans  should  engage  with  Islamists  is  to  get 
militant forces such as the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hizbullah 
on board for conflict management and to allow for inclusive peace 
processes. In these cases, it is evident that Europeans will also have to deal 
with forces that have not renounced violence or that figure on some 
terrorist list. Indeed, the more fragile the environment and the more 
influence such groups wield, the more Europeans should seek open lines of 
communication. If the EU seriously wants to contribute to regional stability 
and prevent further radicalisation, it needs to work towards settling the 
major conflicts in the region, above all the Arab–Israeli conflict, on which 
radical forces thrive. And it will not be successful in doing so as long as it 
follows a policy that isolates major forces with considerable spoiling power. 
 
                                                      
17
 See Echagüe, op. cit. 

---

180 | M
URIEL 
A
SSEBURG
 
 
Finally, Europeans should be aware that the idea of weakening or 
destroying the attractiveness of the ‘Islamist model’ by causing Islamist 
groups like Hamas to fail through isolation and pressure is unrealistic. 
Interventions that follow such a strategy contain the risk of a massive 
destabilisation, as they promote popular radicalisation and open the field 
for jihadist actors who are not tied to a national agenda and who are not 
open to negotiation or compromise. 

---

 
| 181  
A
BOUT THE 
A
UTHORS
 
Omayma Abdel-Latif is a Research and Program Associate at the Carnegie 
Middle East Center, Beirut. 
Muriel Asseburg is  head  of  the  Middle  East  and  Africa  division  of  the 
Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin.  
Ruşen Çakır is a Political Analyst at NTV television and a correspondent 
for the Turkish daily newspaper, Vatan.  
Senem Aydin Düzgit is an Assistant Professor at the Istanbul Bilgi 
University and an Associate Research Fellow at CEPS, Brussels. 
Ana Echagüe is a Research Fellow at FRIDE, Madrid.  
Michael Emerson is head of the EU Foreign, Security and Neighbourhood 
Policies research programme at CEPS, Brussels. 
Khaled Al-Hashimi is a PhD candidate based at the Free University of 
Berlin.  
Ibrahim El Houdaiby is a freelance columnist and researcher.  
Kristina Kausch is a Research Fellow at FRIDE, Madrid.  
Nona Mikhelidze is a Junior Researcher at the Istituto Affari 
Internazionali, Rome.  
Robert Springborg is Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval 
Postgraduate School, Monterrey, CA.  
Nathalie Tocci is a Senior Fellow at the Istituto Affari Internazionali in 
Rome and an Associate Fellow at CEPS, Brussels.  
Richard Youngs is Coordinator of the Democratisation programme at 
FRIDE in Madrid and an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick.