The Challenge of Political Islam: Non-Muslims and the Egyptian State (review)

For the past two decades studies in religion and politics have been closely associated with inquiry into the Islamist surge in the Middle East. Political Islam has been subject to various theoretical insights and studied in numerous contexts. Until the last few years, the role of religious minorities in the politics of the region was relatively underemphasized. Rachel Scott has sought to combine analysis of the Islamist movement with the politics of religious minorities in this very well-constructed study.

The Egyptian case is an appropriate one in which to embark upon a study of Islamist positions on the status of religious minorities. Egypt has been a focal point of the Islamist trend since the early 20^th century. It also boasts the largest non-Muslim population in the Middle East, namely the Coptic Christian community. The Muslim-Christian relationship bears more importantly in Egypt than in almost any other center of Islamist revivalism. For Egyptian Islamists, the presence of the Christian community is not a theoretical problem, but rather a significant reality. What would a political victory for the Islamists mean for non-Muslims in Egypt?

Scott deals with this question by considering current developments in Egyptian Islamist thinking. She differentiates between the Islamist standard bearers of the Muslim Brotherhood and the independent Islamists of the Wasatiyya movement. She first explores the historical development of Islamic regimes, including the dhimma contract under which Muslims tolerate non-Muslim communities and the millet system under which the Ottomans provided them with autonomy. She then dissects the contemporary dilemma of contending Islamist discourses, each of which shows signs of moderating as a means of entering mainstream politics. Intercut with consideration of the Islamist trends is a well-informed assessment of modern Coptic revivalism and Coptic responses to the Islamists. There are brief references to the plight of the Baha'i as well, a group uncomfortably wedged between the Muslim majority and a Christian community wary of coming to their defense. Her conclusion is that neither the Muslim Brotherhood nor the Wasatiyya movement has articulated very clear positions on the status of non-Muslims, though this is likely the result of the continuing refinement of their political thought. While the trend toward moderation should reassure Copts of the Islamists' intentions, significant variations in the positions they take are potentially alarming.

A central preoccupation of the book is the concept of citizenship as articulated and understood in Islamist discourse. To Scott's credit, she recognizes that the politics of Muslim-Christian relations are not simply a product of Islamic theology. Rather, "the Copts are not passive recipients of an Islamist agenda set by Muslims. They are part of an ongoing debate within Egypt concerning the relationship between religion and the state and secular and Islamist conceptions of citizenship" (p. 166). Still, her analysis begins with a certain assumption that Islamists set the agenda for discourse in Egyptian politics and that other currents are either derivative or less likely to appeal to a wide audience. Is this because of the intellectual bankruptcy of the regime or the absence of alternatives? By speaking primarily to intellectuals, she may have missed currents within civil society that counsel other possibilities.

The shari'a and millet systems set the stage for the development of legal systems that recognize religion as a basic category of status for all citizens in the Islamic state. Christian communities have somewhat surprisingly also embraced religion as an important constitutive feature of public life such that many Copts view secularization with suspicion. Wasatiyya intellectual Rafiq Habib, a lay Copt, is identified in Scott's work as one of the more conservative on this point. The republican resurrection of the Ottoman millet in the neo-millet system has been observed elsewhere, though Scott neglects some of the prior work and discussion surrounding this and the various models of...