Among the potent symbols of the Arab spring is one that has been less photographed and remarked on than the vast gatherings in Tahrir Square. It has been the relocation of the offices of the Muslim Brotherhood, the once banned party, now set to take the largest share of seats in Egypt's new parliament.
Before May this year they were to be found in shabby rooms in an unremarkable apartment block on Cairo's Gezira Island, situated behind an unmarked door. These days the Brotherhood is to be found in gleaming new accommodation in the Muqatam neighbourhood, in a dedicated building prominently bearing the movement's logo in Arabic and English.
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? » | Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor | Saturday, December 03, 2011
It's amazing that journalists keep on talking about "political Islam". There is no such thing as a-political or non-political Islam. Islam is nothing if not political. There is no separation of mosque and state; in Islam, religion and politics are inseparable. So why newspapers go on about "political Islam" all the time for, I do not know. – © Mark
