The Rise & Demise of Political Islam

In the 1970s, Islamist movements gained significant political momentum. Sunni and Shi‘i Islamism amassed popularity among young men and women in Tehran, Cairo, and Istanbul for the following four decades. The creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 inspired Egyptian and Turkish Islamists to develop political parties and pursue power. Prof. Abul-Magd recalls her Islamist-oriented political science professors at Cairo University in the 1990s explaining that economic factors led to Islamism’s rapid political success. Underprivileged youth, living under failed socialist or repressive capitalist states, were drawn to an Islamist alternative promising social justice. Today, Islamism is rapidly declining, and the reasons are similarly economic. After using pious charities to penetrate poor urban and rural communities and mobilize votes, Islamists have failed to develop economic thought or deliver policies separating them from the neoliberal West. As their elites espouse the same market-economy principles shared by their imperial enemies, Islamists preserve social inequalities among supporters. Today, outdated discourses on utopian economies of religious solidarity and piety fail to sustain loyalty among the hungry masses in Iran, Egypt, and Turkey.