Shadi Hamid
Fuller Theological Seminary, Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life, Assistant research professor of Islamic studies
Dr. Shadi Hamid is research professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Theological Seminary and a columnist and member of the Editorial Board at The Washington Post. Previously, he was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Hamid is the author of several books, including most recently 'The Problem of Democracy' (Oxford University Press). His previous book 'Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World' was shortlisted for the 2017 Lionel Gelber Prize for best book on foreign affairs. In 2019, Hamid was named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine. He is also the co-founder of Wisdom of Crowds, a podcast, newsletter, and debate platform. Hamid received his B.S. and M.A. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and his Ph.D. in political science from Oxford University.
Supervisors: Michael Willis and Laurence Whitehead
Supervisors: Michael Willis and Laurence Whitehead
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Papers by Shadi Hamid
While there were always weaknesses to these claims of Moroccan exceptionalism, they have only become more evident with time. Recent developments, including the PJD’s spectacular electoral defeat in 2021, suggest the need for a more careful assessment of what went right — and what went wrong — with Morocco’s Islamist experiment. To the extent that there still remains a Moroccan “model,” it may be better understood as a model of what not to do.
This paper argues that anti-Muslim and anti-Islam sentiment should be considered as defining features of right-wing populism. Moreover, the extent to which a given populist party—which might otherwise be ambiguously positioned on a left-right spectrum—can be considered right-wing is closely related to its positions on Islam-related questions. This is particularly relevant for parties that have not always been characterized as “right-wing,” such as Italy’s Five Star Movement, which, after vacillating on refugees and immigration, has increasingly highlighted its anti-Islam bona fides.
Anti-Muslim sentiment is fueled by perceptions—some of which are supported by survey data—that Muslims are less assimilated, particularly when it comes to prevailing norms around secularism and the private nature of religious practice. These markers of Muslim religiosity include workplace prayer accommodations, abstention from alcohol, discomfort with gender mixing, conservative dress, and demands for halal meat options. Observed by significant numbers of Muslims, these are all practices that reflect “private” faith commitments that are at the same time either publicly observable or have public and legal implications.
It would be a mistake to view the debate over Islam and Muslims as only that. The increased salience of anti-Muslim attitudes signals a deeper shift in the party system away from economic cleavages toward “cultural” ones. Increasingly, attitudes toward Muslims become a powerful proxy for a long list of primarily cultural issues and grievances, including gender equality, gay rights, sexual freedom, the role of the European Union, secularism, the decline of Christianity, race, and demographic concerns. Demographic fears—even if they don’t correspond to reality—are difficult to ignore in democracies, where the changing ethnic or religious composition of the population can shape and even determine whether a party can win on the local or national level.
In established democracies, we might expect party systems to be resistant to change, with shifts happening along the margins without altering the basic structure of electoral competition. This makes the current shifts in party alignment and agenda-setting more striking. If party realignments are rare, occurring perhaps only once every few generations, then this suggests that the emerging party system may become entrenched for the foreseeable future, just as previous economic “left-right” divides dominated for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
If there is a cultural divide—and one that is likely to persist—then there are two basic directions to go in response: either some form of top-down, state-driven forced integration; or an effort to accept and accommodate at least some cultural and religious difference. Instead of imposing the responsibility to adapt solely on Muslim citizens or immigrants, both “sides” would need to make compromises.
However, Tunisia’s experience has also raised the concern of whether there is such a thing as too much consensus. In this paper, we argue that the extended pursuit of consensus in Tunisia has also had a dark side, constraining its democratic transition. In the name of consensus, the national unity government of 2015-2019 abandoned controversial but necessary issues like transitional justice and security sector reform and could not take bold action on the economy or on the formation of the constitutional court. That the largest parties were in government together also meant that there was no effective opposition, which in turn contributed to public disillusionment with political parties and democracy. The failure of the unity government was illustrated in the 2019 elections, when the establishment was largely defeated in favor of political outsiders.
Moreover, the consensus government merely postponed rather than resolved the underlying secular-Islamist tensions. That attempt to ignore or paper-over these tensions has contributed to the rise of new, more dogmatically secular and Islamist parties today. Ironically, the extended pursuit of consensus has now made it more difficult to form not just a consensus government but any government at all.
Finally, the Tunisian case suggests that the very presence of consensus politics long into a transition may not be a sign of democratic success, but rather an indication of a deeper weakness in the transition. The decision of Ennahda, the country’s largest Islamist party, to join the consensus government in 2015 rather than lead the opposition stemmed from a fear that it would be repressed or even dissolved. If political parties do not feel comfortable leading the opposition out of fear of repression, then this means democracy is on shaky ground. The presence of consensus can thus be used as an indicator of the lack of democratic consolidation.
competing visions of global religious leadership; these all embody what we term in this new report the “geopolitics of religious soft power.”
We explore the religious dimensions of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry, looking at how the Islamic outreach strategies of the two governments have evolved in response to changing regional and global environments. We assess the much-discussed phenomenon of Saudi Arabia’s export of Wahhabism, arguing that the nature and effects of Saudi religious influence around the world are more complicated than we ordinarily think.
Across wide-ranging cases, the ways that states use Islam in their conduct abroad is often shaped by domestic considerations and, by the same token, the impact it has in target countries is frequently something other than intended due to the mediating effect of local actors and contexts. We ultimately argue that while states are not always able to control the religious narrative or its effects, it is nonetheless important—and growing more important—to pay attention to the increased salience of culture, religion, and ideas in the context of an emerging “post-liberal” world order.
While there were always weaknesses to these claims of Moroccan exceptionalism, they have only become more evident with time. Recent developments, including the PJD’s spectacular electoral defeat in 2021, suggest the need for a more careful assessment of what went right — and what went wrong — with Morocco’s Islamist experiment. To the extent that there still remains a Moroccan “model,” it may be better understood as a model of what not to do.
This paper argues that anti-Muslim and anti-Islam sentiment should be considered as defining features of right-wing populism. Moreover, the extent to which a given populist party—which might otherwise be ambiguously positioned on a left-right spectrum—can be considered right-wing is closely related to its positions on Islam-related questions. This is particularly relevant for parties that have not always been characterized as “right-wing,” such as Italy’s Five Star Movement, which, after vacillating on refugees and immigration, has increasingly highlighted its anti-Islam bona fides.
Anti-Muslim sentiment is fueled by perceptions—some of which are supported by survey data—that Muslims are less assimilated, particularly when it comes to prevailing norms around secularism and the private nature of religious practice. These markers of Muslim religiosity include workplace prayer accommodations, abstention from alcohol, discomfort with gender mixing, conservative dress, and demands for halal meat options. Observed by significant numbers of Muslims, these are all practices that reflect “private” faith commitments that are at the same time either publicly observable or have public and legal implications.
It would be a mistake to view the debate over Islam and Muslims as only that. The increased salience of anti-Muslim attitudes signals a deeper shift in the party system away from economic cleavages toward “cultural” ones. Increasingly, attitudes toward Muslims become a powerful proxy for a long list of primarily cultural issues and grievances, including gender equality, gay rights, sexual freedom, the role of the European Union, secularism, the decline of Christianity, race, and demographic concerns. Demographic fears—even if they don’t correspond to reality—are difficult to ignore in democracies, where the changing ethnic or religious composition of the population can shape and even determine whether a party can win on the local or national level.
In established democracies, we might expect party systems to be resistant to change, with shifts happening along the margins without altering the basic structure of electoral competition. This makes the current shifts in party alignment and agenda-setting more striking. If party realignments are rare, occurring perhaps only once every few generations, then this suggests that the emerging party system may become entrenched for the foreseeable future, just as previous economic “left-right” divides dominated for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
If there is a cultural divide—and one that is likely to persist—then there are two basic directions to go in response: either some form of top-down, state-driven forced integration; or an effort to accept and accommodate at least some cultural and religious difference. Instead of imposing the responsibility to adapt solely on Muslim citizens or immigrants, both “sides” would need to make compromises.
However, Tunisia’s experience has also raised the concern of whether there is such a thing as too much consensus. In this paper, we argue that the extended pursuit of consensus in Tunisia has also had a dark side, constraining its democratic transition. In the name of consensus, the national unity government of 2015-2019 abandoned controversial but necessary issues like transitional justice and security sector reform and could not take bold action on the economy or on the formation of the constitutional court. That the largest parties were in government together also meant that there was no effective opposition, which in turn contributed to public disillusionment with political parties and democracy. The failure of the unity government was illustrated in the 2019 elections, when the establishment was largely defeated in favor of political outsiders.
Moreover, the consensus government merely postponed rather than resolved the underlying secular-Islamist tensions. That attempt to ignore or paper-over these tensions has contributed to the rise of new, more dogmatically secular and Islamist parties today. Ironically, the extended pursuit of consensus has now made it more difficult to form not just a consensus government but any government at all.
Finally, the Tunisian case suggests that the very presence of consensus politics long into a transition may not be a sign of democratic success, but rather an indication of a deeper weakness in the transition. The decision of Ennahda, the country’s largest Islamist party, to join the consensus government in 2015 rather than lead the opposition stemmed from a fear that it would be repressed or even dissolved. If political parties do not feel comfortable leading the opposition out of fear of repression, then this means democracy is on shaky ground. The presence of consensus can thus be used as an indicator of the lack of democratic consolidation.
competing visions of global religious leadership; these all embody what we term in this new report the “geopolitics of religious soft power.”
We explore the religious dimensions of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry, looking at how the Islamic outreach strategies of the two governments have evolved in response to changing regional and global environments. We assess the much-discussed phenomenon of Saudi Arabia’s export of Wahhabism, arguing that the nature and effects of Saudi religious influence around the world are more complicated than we ordinarily think.
Across wide-ranging cases, the ways that states use Islam in their conduct abroad is often shaped by domestic considerations and, by the same token, the impact it has in target countries is frequently something other than intended due to the mediating effect of local actors and contexts. We ultimately argue that while states are not always able to control the religious narrative or its effects, it is nonetheless important—and growing more important—to pay attention to the increased salience of culture, religion, and ideas in the context of an emerging “post-liberal” world order.
I begin this chapter with a puzzle. In the early 1990s, Arab regimes
descended into full-blown authoritarianism, launching aggressive
crackdowns against the Islamist opposition, including in Egypt, Jordan,
and Tunisia. According to what scholars call the “inclusion-moderation
hypothesis,” mounting repression could have been expected to lead to
Islamist radicalization. While this period did indeed see militant groups
engaged in violent struggles with Arab regimes, the story of mainstream
Islamist movements was rather different. Just as regimes grew increasingly
repressive, these groups—most of which are affiliated with or inspired
by the Muslim Brotherhood—accepted many of the foundational
tenets of democracy, including popular sovereignty and alternation of
power. Across the region, they adopted increasingly moderate positions
on political pluralism and women’s and minority rights. Moreover, they
moved to democratize their organizational structures. Jordan’s Islamic
Action Front, for example, achieved a level of internal democracy that
remains unparalleled in the region.