The Muslim Brotherhood’s success in the first round of Egypt’s elections has added to western fears of an Islamist future for the Middle East. But this does not necessarily mean that democracy and liberal policies face extinction.

Welcome to the age of “political Islam”, which may prove to be one of the most lasting legacies of the Arab spring. It is not only in Egypt that an unprecedented Islamist political moment is playing out. In the recent Tunisian elections the moderate Islamist Ennahda party was the biggest winner, while Morocco has elected its first Islamist prime minister, Abdelilah Benkirane.

In Yemen and Libya, too, it seems likely that political Islam will define the shape of the new landscape.

None of which should be at all surprising. Indeed, if elections in Egypt and Tunisia had been held at any other time in the past two decades, the same result would almost certainly have ensued, reflecting both the levels of organisation of Ennahda and the Brotherhood and the countries’ cultural, economic and social dynamics.

“It was a change that was supposed to happen a long time ago,” says Omar Ashour, who lectures on the subject of political Islam at Exeter University and is currently in Cairo.

So what, precisely, does the rise of electoral Islamist politics mean for the Middle East and North Africa?

“Islamism is a term that has been used to describe two very different trends,” wrote Maha Azzam, an associate fellow at Chatham House, in a recent paper on the implications of the Arab spring for British foreign policy earlier this year.

“First, [it describes] the non-violent quest for an Islamic-friendly society based on the ‘principles of Islam’, which can involve a more liberal application of Islamic teachings and tradition or a more strict interpretation. Second, Islamism is also associated with violent extremism, most notably that of al-Qaida in the promotion of terrorism.”

Azzam, like a number of experts, is firm in the belief that, if the Arab spring has demonstrated anything about Islamism today, it is how those cleaving to the second, violent definition have become ever more marginalised in the Arab world.   »»» The Observer (U.K.)

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