<http://www.politicsandgovernment.ilstu.edu/current/conferences/finalcopysubmission/fileuploads/delg84.doc> 15th Annual Illinois Conference for Students of Political Science - March 23, 2007
Religiosity and Political Attitudes: Results from Survey Research among Elite Students in Egypt
Janan Delgado American University in Cairo janan_dd at aucegypt.edu
Abstract. The unprecedented electoral victory of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood (MB) during the 2005 parliamentary elections rendered this Islamist organization the single largest opposition block to the ruling National Democratic Party in parliament. As the Egyptian regime takes steps to liberalize its political system, and the political gains of the MB increase, the question of the real constituency of the organization invites close examination. Relevant literature has repeatedly pointed out that, because of the welfare programs it carries out, the MB's appeal is greatest among the middle and lower classes. Yet, the commonly held notion that the elite are relatively impervious to the appeal of Political Islam is challenged in this study. Through a survey research conducted in the American University in Cairo I examine levels of religiosity and Islamic orientations of the young Egyptian elite. The results suggest substantive yet conditional support of Political Islam. They also suggest that support for political Islam is associated with Islamic orientations and not necessarily with levels of religiosity.
"Brothers and sisters, vote for Walid E-Sallab. May Allah reward you", "Save AUC from becoming a mosque. Vote for Danana today", such were some of the messages massively forwarded to the mobile phones of AUCians on the eve of the 2005 Student Union elections. From the outset, it was clear that this was not like any of the past SU elections at AUC. This time was different because in the minds of many students, this time it was about religion. The AUC campuses were divided into three different camps: the yellow camp, belonging to the "Muslim-backed El Sallab", the blue one, belonging to the "Christian-backed Danana"1, and the group composed of students who consciously decided to boycott the elections protesting the use of religion for political ends. The latter group deplored some of the "yellow" campaigners' portrayal of voting for El-Sallab as being the duty of every pious Muslim on campus, as well as the unfounded rumors by some of the blue campaigners about El-Sallab belonging to some covert Islamist organization.
Caught in the commotion of the moment, it was difficult to distinguish the extent of significance of the situation. However, almost two years after the 2005 SU elections, one can recognize at least two ways in which the elections were important: First, they were reflective of the troubled relationship between religion and politics which characterizes the political debate in Egypt and most of the Muslim Middle East today. Second, and most fascinating to me, they suggested that something so fundamental had changed in Egyptian society that even a social group as supposedly impervious as the elite had been affected by it. Here it was, for everyone to see, the allegedly most westernized, most secular, most alienated segment of Egyptian society effectively mobilized by the appeal of religion. This incident raised essential political questions which are still in search of answers today. Has the elite not been excluded from the phenomenon of increasing religiosity in Egypt? If not, does increased religiosity translate into tacit acceptance of the utilization of Islam for political ends? Would increased religiosity affect political attitudes towards currently existing Islamic organizations? Is there a distinction between levels of religiosity and Islamic orientations, and if so, which one of these has a direct correlation with support of Political Islam? These are some of the questions which I attempt to answer in this study of the young Egyptian elite.
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The Muslim Brotherhood
The Muslim Brotherhood is Egypt's largest Islamic political organization, and it can be said to be the largest representative of Political Islam in Egypt and perhaps the Arab World as a whole. It is not allowed to become a political party, but still it manages to make great political gains. The December 2005 parliamentary elections in Egypt represented an undisputed victory for the organization. With 88 seats, the MB has become the largest opposition bloc in parliament, and the second largest group after the ruling National Democratic Party. During the December elections, the Muslim Brotherhood experienced intimidation, crack-downs, ballot stuffing in favor of the NDP, and other irregularities. And yet, in spite of these obstacles, the government's attempts to prevent them from winning seats in parliament failed. These achievements, coupled with the incompetence of all secular opposition parties in Egypt, have rendered the MB, in the eyes of many, as Egypt's only political party (Shehata and Stacher, 2006).
>From where does the Muslim Brotherhood derive most of its support? A
widely held view is that its support comes from the lower and middle
classes, mainly because of the services it provides, and the
opportunities it offers to the disenchanted segments of the population
(Ottaway, 2004, Tessler 1997). New literature has gone a bit further
to add the concept of framing to the well-known "access to benefits"
explanations (Wickham, 2004). Yet, throughout the approaches used to
explain the social appeal of the Muslim Brotherhood, the elites, in
contrast to the lower and middle-lower classes, seem never to fit in
the picture.
The elites are expected not to fall to the appeal of political Islam and Islamist movements because of a number of reasons. Most of these reasons revolve around the fact that they are not in need of what the Islamist organizations usually offer. They do not need to resort to the charities which the Islamists organize, they are not in need of their clinics, they are not in need of their supplies, and they are not in need of jobs. The theory that recent graduates turn to the Muslim Brotherhood and other similar organizations because they know they will not find employment after graduation certainly does not apply to AUC. The Egyptian market and other markets in the Gulf are always in search of AUC graduates. Furthermore, the elite supposedly indulge in life styles which the Islamist organizations deplore and condemn. And finally, AUC students are supposedly exposed to western liberal ideas, both because of their education at a liberal arts institution, and because of their direct contact with the West through travel and business relations. And yet, El-Sallab, the "yellow" candidate won the 2005 SU elections by a wide margin, and some could hear "Allahu-Akbars" at the AUC Greek campus to celebrate his victory. Then, what exactly is going on?
The Young Egyptian Elite: an empirical study
This section analyzes data collected in the American University in Cairo during Spring 2006. The objective of the analysis is to examine levels of religiosity among AUC students and to examine the influence of Islamic orientations on attitudes towards democracy and political Islam. It aims to see what factors have an influence over this openness/antagonism towards the rule of an Islamist, and whether the increasing levels of religiosity could be one such factor rendering the young Egyptian elite more open to the possibility of giving Islamists a chance in government. This is only the first phase of a larger study. In this phase, only a limited number surveys distributed, and therefore, the results of this survey will need to be tested again once the second phase starts, and a larger sample is collected.
Operationalization:
Twenty questions were asked in the survey in order to cover both dependent and independent variables. In measuring receptiveness/antagonism towards the possibility of having an Islamist in government, I asked interviewees about their positions on Islam becoming political, or, in other words, on Islam being used as a political ideology to organize/shape government and politics in general. I asked direct questions about their endorsement of democracy as the best possible system, and about their views on Islam being compatible will democracy or not.
An additional issue which I wanted to measure in this research project is whether the elite would directly oppose an Islamist coming to power, even if this was the will of the majority. I also wondered what their attitudes towards democracy would be at a time when Lebanese civilians had just been bombed by one of the only two democracies in the region (Israel, the other being Turkey) with cluster bombs supplied by the United States, Iraq was sinking into civil war, and the bits and pieces of Palestine were as pathetically scattered all over as usual.
The Sample
The sample for "the young Egyptian elite" was taken from students of the AUC. The surveys were distributed within the walls of the AUC campus. After the pretest, the survey was distributed to forty-eight students. 40% of interviewees were male, 60% female. It was important that both sexes be represented in the survey, but since sex was not an intended variable, I did not ensure that the male/female ratio be 50/50. Likewise, religion would not be a variable in my hypothesis, but I made sure Christians were represented.
Findings
Hypothesis One: A higher level of religiosity will translate into a higher receptiveness towards having an Islamist come to power. While the reverse of the hypothesis is highly supported by the data, (that the less religious (indifferent) would be less likely to give an Islamist a chance to rule the country), the data show us that the most religious (red) do not move directly to a position of unconditioned support to Islamists coming to power. In fact, the same percentage (40%) of the most religious said they would give the Islamists a chance "under certain conditions" as the percentage of those who said they definitely would. In fact, we see that regardless of level of religiosity (except for the indifferent towards religion), most students would give Islamists a chance to govern the country under certain conditions. In the percentages table we can see that along levels of religiosity the percentage of those giving a chance to Islamists under certain conditions is higher than those from the same category of religiosity who "definitely" would give a chance to Islamists, except in the category of the most religious, where the percentage for giving Islamists a chance under certain conditions is equal to the percentage of those who would "definitely" give them a chance. In conclusion, there is proof for the inverse of this hypothesis (less religious, less likely to give an Islamist a chance), however, for the hypothesis itself there is not strong enough support by the data. The hypothesis was not supported by the evidence.
However, in the above chart we are able to appreciate that the most religious respondents do agree with the idea that Islam should also deal with government and politics. To this point we can make an early interpretation of the results. This chart may suggest that for respondents Islam and Islamists are not necessarily the same. While the most religious do not unconditionally support Islamists, here we can see they do support in principle the idea of Political Islam.
In this chart we can also see a relation between level of religiosity and providing the Islamists an opportunity to form political parties. Most "strongly-committed", "religious" and "moderately practicing" students agree that Islamists should be allowed to form political parties. It is important to note however that the fact that they agree with this idea in principle, does not mean that they would necessarily vote for an Islamists candidate, even if Islamists had parties (as suggested by chart number one), fact which may move us a little bit a way from the religiosity variable into the variable related to opinions of democracy and the political freedoms it entails.
Hypothesis Two: A stronger agreement with democracy being the best possible system will lead to less receptiveness towards voting for an Islamist candidate. The data in this chart is a bit complex. Forty percent of the most committed to the idea of democracy as the best political system would never give an Islamist a chance but another 40% of them say they would give them a chance under certain conditions. While this is not a very strong indication of the validity of this hypothesis, we do see on the other hand that only a 20% of the most committed to the idea of democracy would definitely vote for an Islamist. Yet if we take the second category of agreement with the idea of democracy we see that the great majority (66.7) of them would indeed give Islamists a chance even if under certain conditions.
Again, as seen above, the inverse of this hypothesis is true: the less committed the respondent is to the ideal of democracy, the more likely he is to give an Islamist a chance. But the hypothesis as originally presented is not supported enough by the evidence presented in the data.
This chart may be a better indication of the validity of the hypothesis, because rather than asking a direct question about democracy, respondents were asked about an attitude that is strongly linked to democratic behavior, namely, the respect of the will of the majority. However, again in this chart we see that the trend is consistent with what we have seen above: most respondents, regardless of level of agreement with the principle of abiding by the will of the majority lean towards giving Islamists a chance under certain conditions. In all levels of agreement the greatest percentage went to giving Islamists a chance under certain conditions, which further supports the conclusion reached in the previous chart. This hypothesis is not supported by the data.
Hypothesis Three: Those who view the Muslim Brotherhood as moderates are more likely to vote for an Islamist than those who do not. With the categories of never giving a chance to an Islamist a chance to govern the country, and giving them a chance, we can see that the data proves the hypothesis that those who view the Muslim Brother as moderates are more likely to vote for Islamists in elections. However here again we see that the overwhelming majority of people would give Islamists a chance to govern the country under certain conditions regardless of how they view the Muslim Brotherhood. 66.7% of respondents who view the MB as moderate, and 53.8% of those who view them as radical are willing to give Islamists a chance under certain conditions. This suggests that a significant number of AUCians are aware of the distinct types of Islamists, since even though many see the MB as radical, they would still be willing to give Islamists (other Islamists?) a conditional chance. There is some support for this hypothesis.
Hypothesis Four: The most religious people are the more they will see that keeping Islam outside of modern day politics would be safer for Islam. A majority of "religious" respondents (57.1%) believe that it is safer to keep Islam outside of modern day politics. Although more "strongly-committed" Muslims believed that the statement was not true, note that a very large percent of them (40%) agreed with the statement. On the other hand less religious respondents disagree with the statement. Therefore, there is significant support for the hypothesis that the more religious people are, the more they will agree with the perception that keeping Islam out of modern day politics is safer.
Conclusions
The controversial 2005 Student Union elections at AUC raised several question regarding the role of religion in politics, and they challenged the commonly held notion that the elites are impervious to the appeal of Islam in political matters. This study has attempted to provide answers to some of these questions through the use of survey methodology.
Islamism, the use of Islam as a political ideology, has been on the rise during the past three to four decades. (Esposito, 1997) As Egypt takes small steps towards political liberalization we see the Muslim Brotherhood, the major Islamist organization in Egypt, taking advantage of the new situation to increase its political power and improve their relative political standing. Their major constituency allegedly comes from the middle, middle-lower and lower classes, but what we know about the political opinions of the elite regarding having Islamists come to power in Egypt is limited. It appears as if the antagonism of the elite to Political Islam has been taken as a given.
However, the fact is that there is not enough scholarly work done that can shed light over what is really happening concerning the political opinions of the elite; whether they have stagnated, or whether they are undergoing some type of transformation. On the one hand we know that society is increasingly religious in Egypt (Ibrahim, SE, 2002) and that the upper classes are also part of this trend. Yet we do not know for sure if this increase of religiosity is affecting the views of the political elite regarding Islamism. With a lack of "a systematic and coherent understanding of the connections between religion and politics", particularly among the elites, this research has aimed at being a pioneer in an area that is understudied. (Tessler and Nachtwey, 1998)
Moreover, apart from learning about the political opinions of the elite regarding Islamism, this study intended to shed some light over the distinction between levels of religiosity and Islamic orientations among the elite. I knew from participant observation and from reviewing related literature that the views regarding Political Islam differed according to Islamic orientations and not necessarily according to levels of religiosity. For example, those with an MB orientation would favor giving Islam a role in modern day politics, while those with a so-called Wahhabi orientation would favor a more apolitical form of Islam. Interestingly, to a significant degree these differences were mirrored in the results of this research project.
Although no scientific study has been carried out to examine whether different Islamic Orientations (modernists, "Wahhabis" or Salafis) are present at AUC, one can see in the result of the survey a distinction between those who see themselves as "religious" and those who see themselves as "strongly committed" (a degree above "religious")2, reflected in their attitudes towards a number of things. Although the limitations of this research may render some of the findings relatively imprecise, the findings actually supported the available literature. Namely, support for political Islam is ultimately dependent upon religious orientations and not level of religiosity. I was able to reach this conclusion by not taking the answers of the respondents in isolation, but rather by contextualizing them and relating them to attitudinal variables tested in the survey.
Respondents with an Islamic orientation suggestive of a Salafi source of reference prefer not to interfere in politics and are not active at all. They support the fact that Islam in principle has a political side to it (it should deal with government and politics), but when it comes to the current political reality, they see that the system is corrupted and anti-Islamic and that it is best for Islam to stay out of it until it changes. In this study, a very large percentage of the "strongly-committed" agreed with the statement that Islam should deal with government and politics in principle, however when they were asked whether they would give an Islamist a chance to rule the country not only were they reluctant to say yes, but also 20% of them said that they would never give an islamist a chance.
Muslims with a modernist orientation (as that associated with Sheikh Al Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood) do not advocate for a deep systemic change of the existing political arrangements, rather, they want Islamists to integrate into the political process. In this study the first chart in the first hypothesis indicated that a 14.3% of the "religious" were definitely willing to give the Islamists a chance, while 85.7% would under certain conditions. Quite significantly, no "religious" respondents said they would never give Islamists a chance, unlike the 20% of those who viewed themselves in category above them in religiosity. Why would a significant segment of the supposedly most religious respondents not give a chance to Islamists? Would we not tend to think that the strictest Muslims would want an Islamist government? The answer to this question is the conclusion reached in this study: support for Political Islam is not dependent upon levels of religiosity, but on Islamic orientations. The immediate implication of such a conclusion is that more attention will need to be paid in the future to the nuances within Islamic orientations, in order to measure the real constituency of Islamist groups and hopefully acquire a better understanding of the future of Political Islam in the region as a whole.
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