The rise of Political Islam across the Middle East, North Africa, and even parts of the Gulf after the wave of Arab uprisings in 2011 pitted it against two of the most enduring political projects in the Arab world’s modern history.
The first, the secular Arab republics, and behind them their pillar institutions, saw their foundations shaken by the Arab uprisings and therefore feared that Political Islam, with its vastly different frames of reference, ideological loyalties, and ways of seeing the secular state, would accelerate their erosion.
The second, the Arab monarchies, were not less vulnerable. In a number of Gulf states, the winds of change that had been unleashed in 2011 opened domestic politics to local versions of Political Islam. This was particularly alarming in the Gulf, where religion has long resided at the core of the tribal, social, and economic fabric of political legitimacy.
Political Islam came to power through elections that most observers described as free and fair. But these groups’ experiences, ways of seeing their societies and the world, and the ways in which they began to put their ideas and experiences into practice varied across the region. Some Political Islamist groups tried to undertake their projects while operating within the established political system of their respective countries, through which they had contested and won elections. Others tried to overhaul those systems, threatening the pathways through which they had ascended to power.
The word “project” also meant different things in different parts of the Arab world at the time. In some countries, the projects of the Political Islamist groups seemed largely compatible with the key tenets of the socio-political experiences of their societies. In others, the projects that seemed to be emerging were in stark contrast to those countries’ experiences over at least a century.
But the fundamental problem that the rise of Political Islam triggered concerned the Arab world’s experience with modernity over the past 200 years. At the core of this lay a question about the role of religion, primarily Islam but also Christianity, in modern Arab societies. This role did not concern faith. The key issues revolved round the role of religion in relation to political legitimacy, society’s frame of reference, social norms, economic activities, and, crucially, the identity of the society concerned.
The Arab world, especially Egypt, but also Tunisia and Lebanon, and in some cases also Iraq, had repeatedly attempted to put forward serious answers to the question of the role of religion in modern Muslim-majority societies. From attempts by religious scholars such as Rifaa Al-Tahtawi and Ali Abdel-Razek, to cultural luminaries such as Taha Hussein and Abbas Mahmoud Al-Akkad, to philosophers such as Zaki Naguib Mahmoud, and intellectuals such as Naguib Mahfouz and Osama Anwar Okasha, the Arab world, and especially at its core the colossal Egyptian cultural ocean, had delved into that question from different angles at different times.
But the political milieu that followed the Arab uprisings some 15 years ago was very different from the cultural debates that had unfolded in books and social salons. The Arab world at that time contained multiple theatres of confrontation between the old republics and monarchies that were attempting to preserve what they believed were the fundamental tenets of their societies and the new forces, secular and Islamist, trying to force change at the very core of these tenets.
However, as the previous article in this series showed, whereas the youth-led, largely secular groups that had ignited and led the first waves of the Arab uprisings were largely unorganised, unfunded, and with hardly any leadership structures, the Islamist groups were well organised and funded and had strict structures and ways of operation. Quite quickly, the confrontations over the future of many countries in the Arab world for the most part became between the pillar institutions of the Arab states versus the large Islamist groups in these countries.
These confrontations proved to be intense and were often fraught by echoes of earlier conflicts from decades past. Raw power ruled supreme. Several Arab cities, and not only those that were witnessing the beginnings of civil wars, saw violent clashes. The dreams that had begun with hope in most parts of the Arab world descended in different parts of the region into nightmares. Many correctly, and often presciently, feared for their countries’ futures.
The results were never in doubt, however. In every case the Islamists lost in large and well-organised countries until the change that took place in Syria at the end of 2024. The wave of Political Islam was stemmed.
But the fundamental question about the role of religion in modern Arab societies, and by extension also in modern Muslim-majority societies, remained unanswered. And whereas decades ago that question had triggered intelligent, insightful, and in some cases brave attempts at answering it, over the past decade attempts at tackling the question have been largely mediocre and characterised by seemingly lofty, but in reality often meaningless, rhetoric.
Yet, despite the traumas, the Arab world has emerged from this confrontation stronger, at least in sensing what it is lacking. For the largest segments of most Arab societies, neither Political Islam (in its myriad varieties) nor patriarchal nationalism (whether in old or new garbs or in Arab republics or monarchies) is a guide to the future.
Neither rationalises the past in logical ways; neither balms the pains Arab societies have been suffering for decades; neither offers a nuanced response to the major, yet often concealed, changes Arab societies have been undergoing over the past 15 years since the uprisings. Neither ignites the capacities of their societies, especially the colossal numbers of young people who, as the next article in this series will show, remain trapped between a frustrating heritage from the past and an elusive promise for the future.
The writer is the author of Islamism: A History of Political Islam (2017) and Egypt on the Brink (2010).
* A version of this article appears in print in the 13 November, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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