Mirror for the Muslim Prince: Islam and the Theory of Statecraft

10. What Do Egypt’s Islamists Want? Moderate Islam and the Rise of Islamic Constitutionalism in Mubarak’s Egypt

240 10 What Do Egypt’s Islamists Want? Moderate Islam and the Rise of Islamic Constitutionalism in Mubarak’s Egypt B r u c e K . R u t h e r f o r d In response to both external and internal pressures, many Arab regimes undertook reforms in the 1990s and 2000s that allowed greater political competition. The primary beneficiaries of these reforms were Islamist groups. In the 2000s, Islamists achieved unexpected success at the ballot box in countries as diverse as Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon. As Islamist groups gained more political power, an obvious question arose: what type of political order did these groups seek to create? The Egyptian case provided particular insight into this question. It offered the best-developed discourse on Islamic law and governance of any country in the Arab world. This discourse was led by a vibrant and vocal group An earlier version of this chapter was published as “What Do Egypt’s Islamists Want? Moderate Islam and the Rise of Islamic Constitutionalism,” Middle East Journal 60(4): 707-31. This earlier version was written while the author was a research fellow in the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School. He is grateful to Frank Vogel and Peri Bearman for their encouragement and support. He is also grateful to Ismail Fayed and Naseema Noor for research assistance and to Nathan Brown for comments on an earlier draft. In addition, it should be noted that this chapter does not attempt to study the development of Islamic Constitutionalism (IC) since the removal of Hosni Mubarak. Rather, it focuses on the rise of IC in the last two decades of Mubarak’s rule. What Do Egypt’s Islamists Want? • 241 of Islamic thinkers whose ideas were influential throughout the region. In addition, Egypt had a popular and well-organized Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), that sought to translate the theoretical principles of Islamic governance into a practical political platform. The MB showed considerable flexibility and originality in its efforts to develop a viable conception of Islamic governance.1 Thus a close analysis of the Egyptian experience allows us to study both the theory and the substance of Islamic constitutionalism. This chapter begins with an assessment of the conception of constitutionalism articulated by Egypt’s most influential contemporary Islamic thinkers. It then examines how these ideas were translated into a specific political agenda by the Muslim Brotherhood, particularly during the 2005 parliamentary elections. It concludes with a discussion of the likely impact of Islamic constitutionalism on democratization in Egypt. The Theory of Islamic Constitutionalism in Contemporary Egypt For well over a century, Egypt has been an important center for legal thinkers seeking to adapt Islam to the challenges of contemporary governance. This effort began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with the works of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, and Rashid Rida. It moved forward with Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri’s remarkable synthesis of Islamic and French law in the Egyptian civil code. It continued during the Mubarak era with a new generation of Islamic thinkers. The most important figures in this effort were Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Tariq al-Bishri, Kamal Abu al-Majd, and Muhammad Salim al-Awwa. 1. This flexibility did not extended to its foreign policy. The Muslim Brotherhood remained highly critical of the status quo in the Middle East. For example, the Brotherhood ’s leader, Muhammad Mahdi Akif, called for sending ten thousand MB fighters to Lebanon to assist Hizballah in its clash with Israel during the summer of 2006. See Muhammad Salah, “Murshid al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin: musta‘iddun li-irsal 10,000 Mujahid ila Lubnan” (Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood: We are prepared to send 10,000 Jihadists to Lebanon), al-Hayat, Aug. 4, 2006. For further discussion of the Brotherhood’s foreign policy, see Hamzawy and Bishara 2006. 242 • Bruce K. Rutherford These writers have varied backgrounds. Al-Qaradawi received formal training in Islamic law at al-Azhar University in the 1950s and 1960s, eventually earning a doctorate in 1973 with a thesis that examined the legal and social foundations of zakat. He worked briefly at the Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowments before moving to Qatar, where he established the faculty of shari‘a and Islamic studies at the University of Qatar. He has authored more than fifty books and is one of the most widely read contemporary...