Can islamists be democrats? The case of Jordan

Middle East Journal

Volumn 51, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 372-386

  Robinson, Glenn E ^a,b  

^a NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0000496594     PISSN: 00263141     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. The terms 'democratization' and 'political liberalization' are used interchangeably in this article. The usual distinction - political versus civil rights - does not usefully apply here, as both sets of rights were expanded simultaneously in Jordan after 1989.
2. While often referred to as "bread riots" the demonstrations really had more to do with cuts in subsidies of fuel and sugar. The 1996 riots, by contrast, really were about bread: the price of bread nearly tripled overnight because of cuts in subsidies.
3. The phrase 'one-man, one-vote, one-time' has been used to encapsulate the intolerance of Islamist groups - meaning that wherever Islamists participate in multi-party politics they will both win and dispense with any further democratic politics.
4. There are 20 electoral districts in Jordan, and each elects anywhere from two to nine representatives, for a total of 80 seats. Sixty-eight seats are reserved for non-minority Muslim candidates, nine for Christian, two for Circassian, and one to be contested by Circassian and Chechen candidates. Data on the 1989 elections come from Intikhabat 1989: Haqa'iq wa Arqam (The 1989 Elections: Facts and Figures) (Amman, Jordan: Markaz al-Urdun al-Jadid li al-Dirasat, October 1993).
5. Due to the obvious difficulty in labeling some candidates, reports vary slightly in the reported number of independent Islamist candidates who won office. The data above rely on the categorization made by the al-Urdun al-Jadid research center cited above. Other reports give the Muslim Brothers 23 seats. However, all agree on the figure of 32 Islamists.
6. See Glenn E. Robinson, "Defensive Democratization in Jordan" (forthcoming article, currently under review), for details on all of the measures.
7. Al-Mithaq al-Watani al-Urduni (The Jordanian National Charter) (n.p., December 1990), chs. 1 and 5.
8. Political parties were legalized in 1992 for the first time in nearly four decades.
9. This was confirmed in a number of interviews the author had with leading members of the political establishment in Jordan in April and May 1994. The only one who volunteered this information on the record was Ibrahim Izzedine, who was the Minister of State for Prime Ministry Affairs at the time this decision was made.
10. Unless otherwise noted, figures for the 1993 elections come from Markaz al-Urdun al-Jadid li al-Dirasat, Intikhabat 1993: Darasa Tahliliyya Raqmiyya (The 1993 Elections: An Analytical and Statistical Study) (Amman: February 1994); and Markaz al-Urdun al-Jadid li al-Dirasat, Post-Election Seminar (Amman: February 1994).
11. Unless otherwise noted, figures for the 1993 elections come from Markaz al-Urdun al-Jadid li al-Dirasat, Intikhabat 1993: Darasa Tahliliyya Raqmiyya (The 1993 Elections: An Analytical and Statistical Study) (Amman: February 1994); and Markaz al-Urdun al-Jadid li al-Dirasat, Post-Election Seminar (Amman: February 1994).
12. The 1989 Program can be found in Al-Ra'iy, 25 October 1989, as cited in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Near East and South Asia (FBIS-NES), 27 October 1989. The IAF Platform can be found in Markaz al-Urdun al-Jadid li al-Dirasat, Hizb Jabhat al-'Amal al-Islami (The Islamic Action Front Party) (Amman: 1993). Excerpts can also be found in Hani Hourani, Taleb Awad, Hamed Dabbas and Sa'eda Kilani, Islamic Action Front Party (Amman: al-Urdun al-Jadid Research Center, 1993).
13. The 1989 Program can be found in Al-Ra'iy, 25 October 1989, as cited in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Near East and South Asia (FBIS-NES), 27 October 1989. The IAF Platform can be found in Markaz al-Urdun al-Jadid li al-Dirasat, Hizb Jabhat al-'Amal al-Islami (The Islamic Action Front Party) (Amman: 1993). Excerpts can also be found in Hani Hourani, Taleb Awad, Hamed Dabbas and Sa'eda Kilani, Islamic Action Front Party (Amman: al-Urdun al-Jadid Research Center, 1993).
14. The 1989 Program can be found in Al-Ra'iy, 25 October 1989, as cited in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Near East and South Asia (FBIS-NES), 27 October 1989. The IAF Platform can be found in Markaz al-Urdun al-Jadid li al-Dirasat, Hizb Jabhat al-'Amal al-Islami (The Islamic Action Front Party) (Amman: 1993). Excerpts can also be found in Hani Hourani, Taleb Awad, Hamed Dabbas and Sa'eda Kilani, Islamic Action Front Party (Amman: al-Urdun al-Jadid Research Center, 1993).
15. See 1989 Election Program of the Muslim Brothers, FBIS-NES, 27 October 1989.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Hourani, et al., Islamic Action Front Party, p. 31.
23. Ibid., p. 32.
24. Ibid.
25. Examples in this section are drawn from this author's interviews with Ishaq Farhan and Ziyad Abu Ghanima on 17 and 19 April 1994, respectively, in Amman. Farhan is currently the Secretary-General of the IAF. A Palestinian by birth, he was raised in Salt, Jordan, and was educated at both the American University of Beirut and Columbia University (where he received his Ph.D.). Farhan has a long history of working in both academia and government, primarily in the Ministry of Education. He is widely viewed as a dove within the IAF. Abu Ghanima was born in Irbid, Jordan, and received a BS in chemistry in Turkey. He also worked in the Ministry of Education and at the Islamic Hospital in Amman. A former spokesman for the Muslim Brothers, Abu Ghanima was on the Executive Committee of the IAF before resigning from the party. While still an establishment Islamist, he is seen as a hard-liner.
26. Interview with Ziyad Abu Ghanima, 19 April 1994, Amman.
27. Interestingly, both Farhan and Ghanima used exactly this same phrase, the former in English, the latter in Arabic. Clearly this issue has been raised in the past.
28. Interview with Ishaq Farhan, 17 April 1994, Amman.
29. Al-Watan al-'Arabi, 22 December 1995, as cited in FBIS-NES-95-247, 22 December 1995.
30. Interview with Ishaq Farhan, 17 April 1994, Amman.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Interview with Ziyad Abu Ghanima, 19 April 1994, Amman.
35. Jordan Times (Amman), 12-13 October 1995, as cited in FBIS-NES-95-198, 13 October 1995.
36. Interestingly, most members of the Jaysh Muhammad were reportedly Circassian, and many were veterans of the Afghanistan war.
37. Hourani, et al., Islamic Action Front Party, p. 13. The authors list the current number of employees as 60,000.
38. Ibid., pp. 13-14.
39. The full text of the speech can be found in Selected Speeches by His Majesty King Hussein I, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 1988-1993 (Amman: International Press Office of the Royal Hashemite Court, n.d.), pp. 89-104.
40. Middle East International, 15 March 1996.
41. Jordan Star (Amman), 14 November 1996.
42. Hizb Jabhat al-'Amal al-Islami, p. 29. The remaining 21 founders, or 6 percent, had a variety of occupations.
43. Ibid., p. 30.
44. Ibid., p. 45.
45. Ziyad Abu Ghanima resigned from the IAF after the 1993 elections.
46. Jordan Star, 6 March 1997.
47. For a fuller discussion of this distinction, see Glenn E. Robinson, Building a Palestinian State: The Unfinished Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), ch. 6.
48. Such an outcome in Jordan would contradict Olivier Roy's prediction of the growing supremacy of the 'neo-fundamentalists' - social Islamists - in the Islamist movement in general. See Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).
49. Defining a Palestinian in Jordan is problematic because of the significant familial overlaps. That is, 'Palestinian' becomes a political ethnicity based on the events of 1948 in Palestine. Families from the same clan that migrated from Palestine to Jordan in, for example, 1900 generally view themselves as Jordanian, while families from that same clan who were expelled from Palestine in 1948 are viewed as Palestinian. The author defines a Palestinian as anyone who views him or herself as Palestinian and is viewed by others similarly.
50. These estimates are based on interviews and on deductions made by the author of IAF' membership lists found in Hizb Jabhat al-'Aml al-Islami, pp. 83-103.
51. Of the more than 800,000 actual voters in the election, it is estimated that only 30 percent were Palestinian. Markaz al-Urdun Al-Jadid li al-Dirasat, Post Election Seminar, p. 47.
52. Ibid., p. 55.
53. Ibid., p. 48.