Faisal Ghori
Abstract Submission
Center for the Study of Democracy, UC Irvine
The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas): The Future of Islamist Democracy?
"This is going to be the truest democracy the Arab world has seen."
Hamas candidate Fadel Saleh.
On Wednesday, January 25, 2006 a sea change was to occur. Elections began quietly in the Occupied Territories of Gaza and the West Bank but their results were loud and clear: The Islamic Resistance Movement, better known by its acronym Hamas, had swept the parliamentary elections in an overwhelming majority. We now know that of the 132 seats up for grabs it won 76 of them, or 57.6 per cent. Hamas had engaged the political system and won. The consequences of this electoral victory are hugely significant for both those studying democratic developments in the Middle East and Islamist movements. The morning of January 26, heralded the end of a fifty-year long period in which the Palestinian movement had been dominated by secular political culture and the beginning of a new phase dominated by Islamist political culture. The results are not simply limited by geography and time. For the first time in nearly a century had the model of Hasan al-Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood (ikhwan al-muslimun) yielded political gains. This is no small feat.
As early as 1992, Olivier Roy, had predicted the failure of political Islam. In the decade since then Roy and his dutiful protégé Gilles Kepel have advanced this contention with some minor modifications. For Roy, political Islam’s demise lay in its failure to make political gains, has Hamas now proven Roy and Kepel wrong?
Like Kepel and Roy, others too chimed in and proclaimed the rigid ossified structure of political Islam would be its downfall, but they neither factored in its evolution, nor that of its constituencies. The election then marks the evolution of an infamous terrorist organization to pluralistic democracy! Hamas must now deal not only with its secular counterparts, but also with its Israeli neighbors. The process of democratic participation will surely mellow the organization. Hamas’ new leaders have eschewed the visions of its founders. It now realizes that it must leave the Utopian visions of both an Islamic state and the obliteration of Israel. It is now bound by the rules and must play by them. The roles are now switched: Fatah has now become the opposition, and will play its role vigilantly as did Hamas once. The onus now lies upon Hamas to deliver upon its promises of stability and transparency in government, and above all do what all governments should: provide security to its citizens.
This paper shall examine the evolution of political Islam in light of Hamas’ current victory. It argues that political Islam is neither dead nor ossified, but has evolved as the only opposition within the Middle East, Hamas being the latest example. It further investigates the implications for democratic development in Palestine and the Middle East at large. How will the first Middle Eastern governing body, led by Islamists behave and how does this effect other similar groups? What effect will this have upon their ideological trajectory? Are Islamists set to become the founders of democracy in the Middle East, and if so how must we examine them? As Islamists are painted as latest threat to democracy, will the democratic process transform them into shrewd democrats? Or is the democratic process being manipulated for quick gains?
The consequences of the victory are huge, not just for the Palestinians, but for the Middle East and for global movements of change as a whole. This is because the question of Palestine has become a fundamental symbolic icon of the dark side of the modern condition and a weather vane for the nature of politics in the twenty-first century. These, and related questions, need be studied.
This project is in its data analysis and draft stage.
Faisal Ghori is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University.
He is keenly interested in Islamic political theory, both in its premodern and modern forms, and its implications for liberal democracy. He is a student of Islamic movements throughout the Muslim world. His last projects investigated Islamic reform and revival, and the tradition of Islamic renewal (tajdīd). His research is advised by Dr. Hatem Bazian and Dr. Hamid Algar. He can be reached at .