Just as scholars have begun exploring the concept of “multiple secularisms,” we have much work to do in looking comparatively at various iterations of Islamism, and the factors that spur Brotherhood-inspired movements to rebalance religion and politics in very different ways from one socio-political context to another. There’s so much competition among retail stores, it seems like sales are offered every week. I suspect that the incentives for electoral competition will be so powerful as to make any distinction between the party and the movement essentially meaningless, as happened in Egypt. In the papers, and in our discussions at the June 2015 workshop, one issue that came up was how social service provision plays into discussions over Islamist groups’ decisions on how to manage the distinction between an inclusive, mass-based political party (hizb) and a hierarchical, exclusive social movement (haraka), and whether these can coexist. These are culled from reading the numerous country studies for this project, from taking part in the June 2015 workshop and discussions with fellow working group members in Washington D.C., and from participating in a three-day working group on the next generation of political Islam with Islamist activists in Doha, Qatar.

For example, there were 658 deaths in Europe and all of the Americas between January 1, 2015 and July 16, 2016. There were 28,031-or 43 times more deaths-in other regions-most of them consisting of largely Islamic countries. Seven of the ten countries with the most terrorist attacks in 2016 had vast Muslim majorities, and the death and injuries in the other three involve large numbers of Muslim deaths. But where did the seven deadly sins list come from, and why has this shortlist of mankind’s chief vices endured for centuries? Rather than accusing Christians of stealing the holiday, he was offering a theory for why Western churches “moved” Christmas from January to December, only days away from the winter solstice.E., and the earliest celebrations date back to 250-300 C.E., “a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character,” according to the Biblical Archaeology Society. These were the changes introduced during the Tanzimat, the great Ottoman reform movement in the mid-19th century by which the empire imported many Western institutions and norms. As many of the papers and interventions in this project demonstrate, the extent to which Islamist groups invest in haraka (movement activities, often including religious study groups and “club goods” model service provision) vs.

A major takeaway for me was the realization that we as scholars and analysts need to reflect more deeply on the comparative costs and benefits of partification, or the process of morphing what were originally religious movements into “normal” political parties. To the extent that this facilitates the maintenance of a high-quality, committed membership, it benefits the haraka. But the extent to which movements, particularly confessional movements, choose to invest in party style organization over “movement” activism is a fascinating question for comparative researchers, and one that I think has been quite undertheorized in the existing literature on Islamist movements. Yet following the military coup, as my paper details, the Egyptian government’s broad crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood is forcing the organization to emphasize organizational survival and cohesion over mass political appeal. The Egyptian Brotherhood encountered a similar dilemma when they re-emerged in the 1970s under Anwar al-Sadat. Brotherhood should engage in politics on the monarchy’s terms-in shaping intra-party tensions and cleavages. These cleavages differ in type and influence across multiple country contexts. In Syria, the influence of Said Hawwa and Ibn Taymiyya on the group’s internal educational curriculum, and in particular their demonization of the Alawites, combines with the ongoing polarization in the country to supercharge the country’s sectarian conflict.

Indeed, in his paper on Pakistan, Matthew Nelson suggests that sectarian conflict-rather than ideological convergence-is one potential area where The Islamic State can make inroads and gain influence among South Asia’s militant groups. Farther south is the central region of the Peloponnese. It’s pretty well established in mathematics that pi equates to around 3.14, with a bunch of other digits trailing behind, but that didn’t stop the state of Indiana from considering a bill to redefine pi as 3.2 back in 1897. Thankfully, the bill failed, and the laws of mathematics still stand. It seems that, at least in terms of how they conceptualize the use of violence, the ideological impact of the Egyptian coup and the rise of the Islamic State have been minimal: the Brotherhood has for so long been a gradualist, accomodationist movement that it cannot easily reorient to a revolutionary, confrontationist approach to political contestation. Traditional dichotomizing methods of discussing intra-party Islamist tensions, which often employ the snappily illustrative terms “hawks vs. While religious issues have definitely sparked intra-party disagreement, I’ve been fascinated to discover that-more often-the major sticking points for leaders and supporters have been related to political concessions, principally concessions made on “revolutionary,” or revolution-related, issues.