After the result of the first round of Egypt’s presidential poll – which saw an Islamist face a run-off against a member of the old regime – the thought that the leading country of the Arab world might soon have an Islamist President led to another thought, an imaginary conversation.

If anything needs to be urgently imagined, it’s a world in which there’s religion and, therefore, justice- Ranier Fsadni

I’ve never had the opportunity to play and then discuss John Lennon’s song Imagine with an Islamist. At this point, I’d say, he asks us to imagine there’s no religion to divide us, so we can live all in harmony. If I handpick my Islamist carefully – say, an intelligent woman like the Nobel Peace Laureate Tawakel Karman – I suspect Lennon’s lyrics would reward me with a sudden broad ironic smile and perhaps a quip about naïïvety.

First things first. It’s impossible to generalise about Islamist parties. They’re not different branches of the same movement. Even when they carry the same name – say, the Muslim Brothers or Salafists – the party in each particular country is likely to be deeply imprinted by the particularities of each place.

National identity, indeed nationalism, differentiates one Islamist party from another. It affects the electoral base and, therefore, the programmes, not to say the rivalries within and between different Islamist parties.

There’s no doubting that some Islamists – individuals and parties – have sinister or, at least, authoritarian agendas. Likewise, however, there’s also no doubting (I’m speaking on the basis of investigative study conducted by several scholars and journalists) that many Islamists see themselves as reformers, not implacable enemies of their own societies.

Back to my imaginary conversation about Lennon’s song: Some Islamists would respond with a hard faced grimace to the lyrics. Others, I’m sure, would comment on the irony. In several cases, many (like Ms Karman in Yemen) found themselves drawn towards Islamist activism because of the actions of an authoritarian state that seemed to be held back by no moral norm.

They’d very likely retort: Imagine there’s no religion? Ha! That’s the situation we’re in. And look at the chaos – arbitrary police powers, public spaces where women are harassed, endemic corruption... If anything needs to be urgently imagined, it’s a world in which there’s religion and, therefore, justice.

The dictators have often been called “Pharaohs” by their Islamic opponents – the word here having the Biblical connotations of tyranny, “atheist” because recognising nothing sacred enough to block their quest for power. That characterisation, of course, is as much propaganda as diagnosis. But it resonates among rank and file activists.

In countenancing the success of the Islamist parties at the polls, it’s important – for anyone who wishes to understand what’s really going on – to see that the appeal of Islamism has to do as much with ideas of economic development, social inclusion and justice as with identity and theology.

In other words, it is naïve to spend too much time examining the nature of Islam in general in order to understand the political seesaw. It doesn’t take too long to realise that the success of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohammed Morsi, is due to a chain of events in which secular parties and secularist protestors played their own decisive role.

I would highlight three factors.

First, you had the mass of secular protestors that disdained formal politics and partisanship. It united around rejection of the regime. Then, allocating itself the role of guardian of the revolution, it could not actually fulfil the role because it ceded the ground to political parties, the only kind of organ that can develop a political programme and advocate it.

Second, you had the role of the secular parties, which were outplayed both by the ruling army council and the Muslim Brotherhood. They allowed themselves to be dragged into debates about “identity” instead of debates about policies. “Identity politics” will always favour the Muslim Brothers, not so much because of the religious aspect as because of the populist dimension.

And, since they were outplayed by the Muslim Brothers, the secular parties were increasingly obliged to look towards the army as an outside arbiter, transcending the system, guaranteeing it. The army and security apparatus are, of course, hardly transcendent: with its economic and political privileges, the army elite is an intrinsic part ofthe system itself.

Finally, the army needed the Muslim Brothers and its organisation to help bring order to the streets and see to it that enough people voted yes in the referendum that preceded the presidential poll. An unholy – and by no means Islamic – alliance of convenience was made between the army and the Islamists.

I’ve just called the alliance unholy. Maybe that was unfair. The alliance showed flexibility and adaptability. By no means should it be taken for granted that Islamists in government will not be pragmatic politicians.

ranierfsadni@europe.com