Is This the End of Political Islam?

Good commentary. Delivery failures and corruption (not unique of course to Islamic governments):

…For now, many scholars doubt that political Islam will rise again soon. In a new book, “Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam,” Faisal Devji, a historian at Oxford, compares political Islam to Communism, Baathism and other ideologies that sprang up during a specific historical moment and later lost their relevance. Terrorism tarnished the Islamist brand, too, Professor Devji told me. Most Muslims abhorred the cinematic violence of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. “With the emergence of Al Qaeda and ISIS, you had a massive rethinking of what a Muslim public life and politics should look like,” he said.

Of course, measuring what people want across an area as vast as the Middle East is difficult. A further tangle is how to define political Islam, which can encompass everything from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, an Islamist at the head of a constitutionally secular state, to radical jihadists who attack anyone who disagrees with them, including other Muslims.

To avoid such complications, Arab Barometer, a public opinion tracker, focuses on specifics, said Michael Robbins, the group’s director. Its surveys ask whether it is better for religious people to hold state positions, whether clerics should have sway over government decisions and whether religion should be private and separated from socio-economic life. It compares those indicators in six Arab countries — Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Iraq, Lebanon and Tunisia.

Overall, its results suggested that only a minority was enthusiastic about political Islam. From 2012 to 2025, support for religious people in government ticked above 50 percent in just two of the countries, Jordan and Morocco. Support for clerical influence over state policy rose in five countries, but was above 40 percent only in Iraq, at 58 percent. (In the United States, by comparison, 43 percent of people say the government should promote Christian values, according to the Pew Research Center.) Solid majorities in four of the countries agreed that religious practice should be a private matter.

But public opinion holds limited sway in the Middle East. Polling in many countries is scant, and power is held mostly by autocrats who don’t have to worry about angry voters chucking them out in the next election….

Source: Is This the End of Political Islam?