Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (review)

Making Islam Democratic is a very useful book and a valuable contribution to the study of contemporary sociopolitical currents in the Middle East. Asef Bayat has been privileged to have firsthand knowledge of two key Muslim societies, Iran and Egypt, where some of the most influential intellectual trends and consequential events of the past two centuries have occurred. Focusing on events of recent decades, Bayat adopts a "broad comparative" approach in examining in these countries the emergence and development of two political trajectories, "Islamism" and "post-Islamism." A social scientist by background, Bayat treats them from the perspective of social movements geared toward democracy and public participation, weaving social theories with lucid accounts of socioreligious experiences.

From the beginning, Bayat sets himself up to analyze the difficult topic of the "compatibility of Islam and democracy" in the context of the social and political realities of Muslim life. His stated assumption is that "the realization of democratic ideals in Muslim societies has less to do with the 'essence' of Islam than with the intellectual conviction and political capacity of Muslims." He concludes that "the question of democratic polity is then one of political struggle rather than religious scripture, even though religion is often deployed to legitimize or to resist political domination" (xvii). Bayat has rightly made a very important point here, which he endeavors to demonstrate throughout the book. However, he tends to underestimate the role of theoretical discussions that challenge centuries-old political traditions, social ethos, and religio-ideological convictions of a society in the process of democratization. As for religion, it is, after all, through theoretical reexaminations of inherited traditions that new understandings develop, including those that can provide a plausible structure for the faithful to participate in the process of the democratization of their societies without the fear of violating the precepts of their religion. In general, overemphasizing the role of social groups in changing the political ethos of an Islamic society could be as misleading and narrow an analysis as overemphasizing the merely theoretical and intellectual debates over the compatibility of Islam and democracy, for there is a symbiotic relationship between interpretations of the "sacred" and dispositions of the society of the faithful. No interpretation happens in a vacuum. Any interpretation of religion (radical or democratic) reflects the principal conditions of its time and context. Equally, no social movement that heralds new values and ideals can develop roots in a religious society without the endorsement of an authoritative reinterpretation of religion that could harmonize its new ideals with society's spiritual and religious sensibilities, let alone the inspiration that social groups receive from intellectuals who, by virtue of their role, sow the seeds of such ideals.

Chapter 2, "Revolution without Movement, Movement without Revolution," presents a rather detailed comparison of various aspects of social, religious, and political experiences in Iran and Egypt during the period of the 1960s–1980s. By contrasting these two cases of Islamism, Bayat aims to show how the Islamization of society, and thus politics, took a different course in the two countries. One was Islamized from above after a sudden "revolution" in 1979 that established the Islamic Republic of Iran. Egypt, in contrast, has been experiencing an Islamic "movement" that although failing to bring about an Islamic revolution and state, continues to be pervasively rooted in society and well represented in Egyptian politics. Not only does this chapter present a useful background of political developments in these countries, but it also sets the tone for the rest of the book. The following chapters contend that Egypt is picking up where Iran has left off, that is, Islamizing society and politics, though through a "passive revolution." They show how, since the 1990s, these two countries' social movements—regardless of their contrasting objectives—have adopted a politics of participation rather than revolution in order to achieve their goals vis-à-vis their autocratic states; the one is Islamic and the other secular.

Chapters 3 and...