Legitimacy and the Islamist challenge : a comparative study of the regime's strategy towards the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan, 1980-1989

In the 1970s, the Arab world faced Islamist resurgence. Islam achieved a role as a symbol of political legitimacy and became a source of political and social activism and popular mobilisation. The religious resurgence came as a reaction to the legitimacy deficit in the Arab regimes. The Islamists challenged the regimes’ power in the Middle East. This thesis represents an effort to look close into two cases where this phenomenon has taken place. I sought to find out if there was a connection between the regime’s problems of legitimating power and its strategy towards the Islamist opposition. I did a comparative analysis of the relationship between the regime in Egypt and Jordan and the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that had branches in both Egypt and Jordan. I studied the political situation in Egypt and Jordan from 1980 to 1989. Michael Hudson’s Arab Politics. The Search for Legitimacy from 1977, which describes the legitimacy problems in the Arab world in this period, was used as a starting point. My hypothesis said that the regime’s legitimacy deficit forces an inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood in the political process. The regimes in Egypt and in Jordan both had problems legitimating their power in the 1980s. I identified these problems with David Beetham’s criteria for power legitimacy. There were two common traits for the regimes’ lack of legitimacy, meaning that particularly two of Beetham’s criteria for legitimacy were not fulfilled. The regime’s power did not conform to established rules. In addition, there was not evidence of consent by the subordinate to the regime. Instead, there were demonstrations and protests against the regime’s politics. The Muslim Brotherhood enjoyed considerable support among people in both states. The movement had become an effective agent of social and political change by developing alternative socio-economic institutions, in addition to participating in the political process and demonstrating its strength in institution-building and popular mobilisation. In the beginning of the 1980s, the regimes in both Egypt and Jordan tried to include the Muslim Brotherhood in the political process. In this period, the Muslim Brotherhood was allowed to have activity in both states. The regimes also tried to co-operate with the religious establishment, and in Egypt, the government separated between moderate and extremist Islamists and treated the former better. The regimes let the Muslim Brotherhood participate in the elections, and in Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood even got positions in the cabinet. However, later in the 1980s, it seemed like the Egyptian and Jordanian regimes realised that their policy of inclusion had failed and that they had not managed to get control with the Muslim Brotherhood. Both the regime in Egypt and in Jordan now started to pursue a stricter policy towards the Muslim Brotherhood in their respective states. After the 1987 elections, members on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood were probed about their attitudes on different issues. President Hosni Mubarak did not distinguish between moderate and militant Islamists anymore. He used harassment and imprisonment to control the Muslim Brotherhood. In Jordan, the regime denied the Brotherhood representation in the cabinet after the 1989 elections. The regime tried to limit the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities in the parliament and resorted to constitutional provisions allowing for the use of the executive veto of the legislative body. The strategy towards the Muslim Brotherhood differed to some extent. I found that although both states had problems legitimating their power, the regime in Jordan pursued a more inclusive strategy towards the Muslim Brotherhood than the regime in Egypt. Jordan’s King Hussein had a tolerant attitude towards the Muslim Brotherhood because he thought the movement might be useful to him. The regime in Egypt put to a larger extent restrictions on the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities. The strategy seemed to change when both the regimes had failed to control the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian and the Jordanian governments had tried to co-opt the Muslim Brotherhood, but ended up trying to contain the movement instead. In the two cases I have studied, the hypothesis partly got support. The hypothesis applied more to the situation in Jordan than in Egypt