The study of political Islam has primarily been confined to states in which IslamistFootnote 1 groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood can participate in elections, provide much-needed social welfare, or more broadly constitute powerful social movements.Footnote 2 Due to the absence of such criteria in the wealthy monarchical Arab Gulf states, these states have not been examined in literature on political Islam. Existing scholarship on political life in the Gulf has similarly overlooked the role of Islamist movements in that region. Since Hussein Mahdavy introduced the theory of the “rentier state” in 1970,Footnote 3 many scholars have deferred to this framework to explain the domestic politics of states that accrue substantial oil profit, or rents, in the region. Numerous studies, both qualitative and quantitative, have demonstrated the reality of a “rentier effect,” distinguishing rentier states from those without large external windfalls.Footnote 4 In such states, taxation is described as spurring citizens’ demands for representation, with lack of taxation expected to yield political quietism. According to a leading scholar of rentier state theory, Hazem Beblawi, “with virtually no taxes, citizens are far less demanding in terms of political participation.”Footnote 5 The simple formula “no taxation, no representation” is thus often considered to describe the extent of politicalFootnote 6 life within rentier states. Though the attributes of the rentier political economy undoubtedly influence activities and agendas of independent political and social movements inside the Arab Gulf states, the reality is far more complicated than rentier state theory portrays.
This article examines the role of political Islam in the Gulf through the study of Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in two of the least-studied rentier states in the region: Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These states represent archetypal rentiers, or super-rentiers,Footnote 7 as the region's wealthiest and most generous countries, which also lack parliamentary oversight and means for local Brotherhood groups to participate in institutional political life. We find that, due to the combination of immense oil wealth and closed political systems in these two countries, Muslim Brotherhood movements are motivated primarily by ideology and are more informally organized than their affiliates elsewhere in the region. We will trace how Muslim Brotherhood movements, the most powerful independent political voices in the Middle East, emerged in and currently influence government policies in rentier contexts.
That Muslim Brotherhood groups in the small Gulf monarchies do not resemble their counterparts elsewhere in the region should not be surprising. These groups face a different set of political opportunity structures. In the Gulf's rentier states, the presence of oil rents, rather than rendering Islamist complaint irrelevant, shapes how Islamist movements seek to influence government policy in numerous ways. First, due to handsome disbursements from rentier governments, these groups have neither the need nor the ability to rival the government in the provision of social welfare. Second, a dearth of electoral politics (other than in Bahrain and Kuwait) means that Brotherhood affiliates are not responsible for the organization of parliamentary political campaigns. Third, due to the prevailing strength of tribal social ties, the Brotherhood throughout the Gulf rentiers does not need to provide an alternate social network as affiliates have done elsewhere in the Middle East. Free of the responsibility for providing any of the above tangible outcomes to followers, rentier Islamist organizations are far more flexible than Brotherhood branches elsewhere in the Arab world, especially in states such as Qatar and the UAE where political participation remains limited. In these latter states, Brotherhood affiliates exist primarily as ideological inspiration rather than as organized parties. This flexibility is as much a conscious adaptation to the Gulf political terrain as it is an imposed constraint—actors within wealthy rentier states remain dependent on, and stand to benefit from, powerful central governments.
By examining the strategies employed by Islamist affiliates in the super-rentiers of Qatar and the UAE to gain political influence, this article fills a gap in the existing literature on political Islam. Engaging with work on the relationship between social movements and political opportunity structures, it argues that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a monolithic entity with a rigid playbook, but rather a social movement able to adapt to highly divergent political and economic environments. We now turn to an analysis of how local branches of the Muslim Brotherhood adapt to rentier environments.
RECONCILING SCHOLARSHIP ON RENTIER STATE THEORY AND POLITICAL ISLAM
Hussein Mahdavy first defined rentier states, in the context of Iran, as “those countries that receive on a regular basis substantial amounts of external rents. External rents are in turn defined as rentals paid by foreign individuals, concerns or governments of a given country.”Footnote 8 Hazem Beblawi later expanded this definition by describing four characteristics of the rentier state: its economy is dominated by rent money; the economy is reliant on external, rather than internal, rents; small numbers of people are involved in the creation of this rent; and the government is the primary recipient of external rent.Footnote 9 Beblawi goes on to explain that, in these states, citizens tend to receive payments from their wealthy governments. In such an environment, “income is no longer a reward of serious and hard work.”Footnote 10 Rather, nationals are recompensed for being citizens, making them less likely to form political opposition movements or to make demands of the state generally. As Michael Ross summarizes, “when oil revenues provide a government with enough money, the government will use its largesse to prevent the formation of social groups that are independent from the state and hence that may be inclined to demand political rights.”Footnote 11 To test for the presence of this effect, Ross examines the state sector gross domestic product (GDP). He finds that “the greater the government's size (as a fraction of GDP), the less likely that independent social groups will form.”Footnote 12
What we find, however, is that independent political and social groups can and do emerge from within the rentier framework, regardless of the government's size as a fraction of GDP. Such organizations garner followers not by providing material provisions or involving themselves in direct confrontation with the system, but through ideological appeal. As Hootan Shambayati points out, economically based opposition movements are not likely to emerge in rentier contexts; instead, “organized challenges to the state are based on moral and cultural issues, where rentier states are most vulnerable.”Footnote 13 Indeed, the political system, like the economy, becomes “a hierarchy of layers of rentiers within the state with the government at the top of the pyramid.”Footnote 14 As such, independent groups compete for government support without which they are unlikely to gain economic or political influence. Because rentier governments provide their populations with a variety of public goods and services at an impressive level and at little to no cost to citizens, they retain primary power.Footnote 15 Islamist groups, like other actors, attempt to maintain “their favorable cut of the political-economic pie.”Footnote 16 Since all rentier actors are dependent on the state, at least to some extent, challenging it outright is irrational, and so gradualism prevails.
Yet few existing studies have focused on the Muslim Brotherhood as a social movement within the Arabian Peninsula. Academics have long debated whether Islamist movements generally constitute, at their core, a sociocultural or psychological reaction to the failures of the modern state and Western encroachment in the Muslim world,Footnote 17 a response of the disenfranchised to economic disappointment,Footnote 18 or a political movement agitating for a greater say in government.Footnote 19 Central to most of these explanations has been the power of such groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, to provide benefits that governments could not. As the Egyptian case shows, particularly in the Mubarak years, “the necessary precondition for the rise of Islamism has been the declining efficacy and legitimacy of the Egyptian state.”Footnote 20 That the Brotherhood has traditionally been able to provide “concrete economic benefits,” as well as a stable community of people with common beliefs, has made the organization attractive.Footnote 21 Because rentier states function, for the most part, as effective service providers, however, rentier Islamists use different means to mobilize support.
As a result, social movement theory treatments of the Muslim Brotherhood do not adequately capture the multidimensional nature of Brotherhood affiliates in the Gulf. Gilles Kepel's notion that Islamism became attractive to youth disappointed with a lack of economic opportunities, “crises of legitimacy in their political systems,” and the failure of secular oppositional ideologies is less relevant in the Gulf states.Footnote 22 The description of Islamists supported by Tarek Masoud, among others, that Islamist groups are, at their core, “political organizations with strategies and resources that can be observed directly and measured with precision,”Footnote 23 is insufficient to explain their presence in states lacking institutionalized political spaces. If Brotherhood groups existed solely to secure political power by contesting parliamentary polls, how and why would they be found in states that deny them the opportunity to contest any type of election? The existence of local Muslim Brotherhood branches in states where they cannot compete for institutionalized political power demonstrates that there is more to their platform than politics and that they often exert political influence through the informal sector.
The Brotherhood has historically defined itself as far more than a political organization or social group. Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna famously described the organization as “a Salafi movement, an orthodox way, a Sufi reality, a political body, an athletic group, a scientific and cultural society, an economic company and a social idea.”Footnote 24 Such a wide-ranging definition reflected al-Banna's holistic view of Islam's role in society and of his Brotherhood's mission to spread this vision of religion's central role in political and social life. Though other Brotherhood thinkers have undoubtedly influenced the group, the aim of reconstructing the social order by appealing to faith remains central. In line with this vision, Islamist mobilization comes from the grassroots and is, in the words of Janine A. Clark, “an attempt to create a seemingly seamless web between religion, politics, charity, and all forms of activism.”Footnote 25
Carrie Rosefky Wickham's study of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt aptly reflects the multifaceted nature of Islamist movements, though it explains Brotherhood activity in the context of state retreat absent in the Gulf states. She describes the Brotherhood as gaining followers not only through the provision of material and social benefits, but also through its ideology, something that social movement theory–based explanations overlook.Footnote 26 As John Obert Voll put it, the Islamist trend “would not be a serious movement worthy of our attention were it not, above all, an idea and a personal commitment honestly felt.”Footnote 27 Islamists provide an ideology of reform encompassing all aspects of life, including social structure, politics, and economics. Writing about the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Wickham explains: “What defined the Islamic movement was less its opposition to a given regime or set of policies than its efforts to construct, from the bottom up and over time, a new kind of society inspired by Islamist ideals.”Footnote 28 In Steven Brooke's estimation, Islamist groups have even avoided confrontation with regimes; they “participated in political systems, adopted national discourses, and largely subjugated their activism to regime laws.”Footnote 29 Brotherhood-related institutions have historically registered with state authorities, and regimes have chosen to target such organizations without tackling the root causes for their activities.Footnote 30
Under authoritarian regimes that provide limited institutionalized means of Islamist political participation throughout the Middle East, the social realm becomes the primary site for Islamist activism and mobilization. Members of the Brotherhood, as Sherri Berman describes, “finding themselves unable to achieve their revolutionary goals directly by conquering the state, turned to gradually remaking Egyptian society and culture. And in this they have been remarkably successful.”Footnote 31 In rentier environments, where governments provide not only generous material benefits and services to their citizens but also a state-sanctioned vision of Islam, the multifaceted nature of the Muslim Brotherhood and appeal of its ideology become especially clear. It has often been assumed that wealthy Gulf regimes are well equipped to face down complaints, Islamist or otherwise, using generous welfare packages, repression, or patronage,Footnote 32 and that their commitment to Islam and promotion of the type of Islam they find appropriate leave little space for independent Islamists to act. This lack of space is, of course, no accident: with the influx of expatriate Islamists during crackdowns on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, Gulf governments hoped to discourage indigenous groups with similar political appeal. Nonetheless, after Brotherhood members arrived in the Gulf eager to spread their organization's ideology, local affiliates developed and became increasingly nationally focused. As Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke point out, “the ideological affiliations that link Brotherhood organizations internationally are subject to the national priorities that shape each individually.”Footnote 33
EXISTING SCHOLARSHIP AND THE WAY FORWARD
Perhaps the only extended scholarship in EnglishFootnote 34 specifically dedicated to Islamist activism inside the Gulf is Stéphane Lacroix's 2011 book on Saudi Arabia. In this study, he explains the rise of independent Islamism inside the Kingdom, tracing Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the education system, outlining the transformation of Islamists into independent actors in the form of the Sahwa movement, and analyzing the ultimate failure of this group to effect major change. While Islamist complaint initially constituted “politically neutered opposition [that] gradually became primarily a cultural opposition,” dynamics changed with the advent of the Sahwa movement in the 1990s.Footnote 35 This group united previously disjointed sectors of society, namely the ʿulamaʾ and intellectuals, behind an Islamist agenda. Until 1994, the Sahwa movement managed, as an independent Islamist movement, to gain control of political discourse.Footnote 36 By tracing how Islamists in a rentier context came to hold political appeal, Lacroix makes an important contribution. He also provides scholars with the important notion of “state Islamism”: “In almost all countries in the Muslim world, Islamism arose and developed outside the state. The converse was true of Saudi Arabia: from the beginning, Islamism was integrated into the official institutions.”Footnote 37
Because the state dominates life in rentier societies, it has historically played a large role in the Islamic sector, even more so than governments elsewhere in the region. Further, because religion is an important component of political legitimacy for rentier Gulf governments, state authorities remain willing to use ample funds to bolster its social role. Such governments use ministries of endowments (awqāf) and Islamic affairs to monitor mosques, imams, and sermons, while spending vast amounts of money to promote Islamic activities such as Qurʾanic recitation festivals and grand mosques to assert their own commitment to Islam. As a result of these characteristics, the trajectory of Islamist organizations is different in Gulf states, whose governments can and do put their substantial assets behind Islamic causes.
While Brotherhood movements elsewhere in the region originated in opposition to the existing order, Islamists in the Gulf gained political capital by working through the prevailing system before coming to challenge it. As Herbert P. Kitschelt puts it, “political opportunity structures functioned as ‘filters’ between the mobilization of the movement and its choice of strategies and its capacity to change the social environment.”Footnote 38 Like other actors in rentier states, Islamists compete for state support, whether material or symbolic. Since they cannot afford to exist outside of the system, they work gradually from within it to promote their ideology. As a result, writing the history of the Muslim Brotherhood in rentier states, especially in the super-rentiers, involves tracing their influence through various ministries, particularly education, Islamic affairs, and justice. Kitschelt also observes that closed systems, wherein a small number of elites formulate policy, are least likely to welcome input from social movements.Footnote 39 In such states, Sidney Tarrow points out, “elites chose their allies and attacked their enemies, and the state provided opportunities to some groups and not to others.”Footnote 40 At their inception, Muslim Brotherhood groups in the Gulf were closely allied with their government; as they became increasingly powerful through state support, however, this relationship changed, in turn altering political opportunity structures.
As Gwenn Okruhlik has pointed out, Sunni Islamist movements in the Saudi context have benefited from the fact that the ruling family “cannot easily quash or oppose Islamist arguments, since they stake their right to rule on largely Islamic grounds.”Footnote 41 The same is true to a large extent elsewhere in the Gulf. Okruhlik's study goes a long way toward demonstrating that Islamist actors in the Gulf do, in fact, hold political influence, though this influence may be uninstitutionalized. Nonetheless, like Lacroix's research, Okruhlik's work remains focused on the Saudi case. Because Islam in Saudi Arabia is institutionally wedded to the state through a centuries-old alliance between the Saudi ruling family and the Wahhabi ʿulamaʾ, one of the ruling elite's political priorities is support of Wahhabi Islam. A threat to Wahhabism thus constitutes a threat to the political ruling order, making it difficult for independent Islamist movements to form in that country. Nowhere else in the broader Middle East does such an institutionalized link between religious and political leadership exist.
The Kuwaiti case has been less documented but provides an interesting example of rentier Islamist political activity within a parliamentary system. Since the 1980s, the country's Muslim Brotherhood organization has successfully fielded candidates for the legislature and, in 1991, created a specialized political branch, al-Harakat al-Dusturiyya al-Islamiyya (Islamic Constitutional Movement, or ICM), which functions as a political party in all but name (political parties are formally banned). The ICM works alongside Jamʿiat al-Islah al-Ijtimaʿi (Social Reform Association), the organization's social branch, established in 1951. The Kuwaiti Brotherhood is highly organized and well funded, benefits from a broad support base, and undoubtedly boasts the most clearly developed political platform of all Brotherhood affiliates in the rentier states, as it is the only one that participates in electoral politics under the umbrella of the institutionally powerful ICM. Because Kuwait, despite being a super-rentier state, houses a politically powerful parliament, the Brotherhood in that country has been able to participate in the institutionalized political sphere, making its structure and aims different from Brotherhood branches in other super-rentier states.
The Kuwaiti Brotherhood is also the only Brotherhood branch in the super-rentiers that has been forced to take on the responsibility of service provision, which occurred during the Iraqi occupation. Whereas before the Iraqi invasion the group focused on ensuring the Islamization of society and the implementation of shariʿa, during the occupation the ICM adapted a more flexible prodemocracy agenda through which it garnered greater popular support. It has become outspoken in its criticism of the regime and of the government system more broadly, pushing for the passage of a political parties law and the creation of a constitutional monarchy, and often allying with secular groups to advance these aims. By forming coalitions with secular opposition blocs, the Kuwaiti Brotherhood has become increasingly politically relevant and has continued to emphasize the need for reform above social Islamization.
Such a system differs greatly from the more informal and less institutionalized political systems of Qatar and the UAE. Qatar has one elected political institution, the Central Municipal Council, which, due to the ban on political parties, plays little more than an advisory role in primarily nonpolitical matters. Policy decisions remain in the hands of a relatively small number of people, namely members of ruling Al Thani family. Though Qatar does not have a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which formally voted to disband itself in 1999, Islamist influence remains palpable, if not structurally salient, through grassroots movements to alter social policies.
The UAE is composed of seven emirates, each with its own ruling family. Still, the country is dominated by the ruling families of Abu Dhabi (the president is Abu Dhabi ruler Shaykh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan) and Dubai (the vice president is Dubai ruler Shaykh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum). The UAE has one partially elected body, the Federal National Council (FNC), yet its members are chosen by a small percentage of Emirati nationals. Further, because political parties are also illegal in the UAE, the FNC is largely apolitical and holds only nonbinding advisory power in a variety of federal government matters.Footnote 42 As a result, decision making in the UAE, like Qatar, remains personalized and concentrated in the hands of relatively few people, making comparison of the two apt.
The extent to which the political influence of Brotherhood affiliates in the super-rentiers is institutionalized depends on the degree to which the systems wherein they operate are formalized. In the restrictive political environments of Qatar and the UAE, which lack influential professional organizations, student groups, and political parties, the informal sphere is the most plausible arena for independent political activity. Meetings of majālis Footnote 43 are primary modes of voicing political and social concerns. Such meetings, some of which are convened by rulers, remain an important element of domestic politics, serving as “the final court of appeal on all important matters.”Footnote 44 Considering the uninstitutionalized and highly personalized nature of political life in the super-rentiers, it is unsurprising that social trust remains an important component of political allegiance and that religiosity becomes a political asset. The Qatari Brotherhood is the least overtly politically active because Qatar's system allows the least institutionalized space for formal political participation. In the UAE, the federal system has allowed for the existence of independent Islah branches within the state.
Notably, Qatar and the UAE are the wealthiest states in the Gulf and thus would be the least likely, at least as predicted by rentier state theory, to house any type of influential groups independent of the government. They are also the most demographically unbalanced: as of mid-2010, Qatar's population was 85.7 percent expatriate, compared to 88.5 percent in the UAE.Footnote 45 As non-Muslim expatriate populations increase, Islamism becomes a means of reasserting national identity against increasing secularization and, in some cases, Westernization. Moves to promote the use of Arabic language, for instance, are at once a means of promoting local identity and of upholding Arabic and Islamic education of the type traditionally supported by the Muslim Brotherhood. Though their means for exercising political pressure differ, Brotherhood affiliates in Qatar and the UAE gather political capital in much the same matter, as will be illustrated.
THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IN QATAR AND THE PERSISTENCE OF THE INFORMAL SPHERE
Though formally dismantled, the Qatari Muslim Brotherhood retains ideological appeal that the government has largely accommodated by implementing social policies of the type supported by Islamists. Long before the creation of a formal Muslim Brotherhood organization in 1975, its supporters, many from Egyptian and Palestinian branches, had managed to secure substantial influence inside Qatar's education sector. In fact, as ʿAbdulla Juma Kobaisi, describes,
for a period of three years (1953/54 to 1955/56) most of the teachers who were brought in to run the Qatari schools were ideologically in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood Party, and in particular politically against the leadership of President Nasser. They stamped the educational system with their Islamic ideology since the education department of Qatar was under their control.Footnote 46
Into the 1960s, influential Brotherhood members were appointed to important positions in the education sector. Egyptian Brotherhood scholar ʿIzz al-Din Ibrahim was made assistant director of knowledge, responsible for creating a school syllabus.Footnote 47 When the head of Islamic sciences at the Department of Education ʿAbd Allah bin Turki al-Subuaʿi went to Cairo's al-Azhar University in 1960 to recruit Islamic scholars, he returned with several Islamist intellectuals. Most notably, al-Subuaʿi recruited outspoken Brotherhood ideologue Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi from al-Azhar to teach at the Qatari branch of the university in 1961. ʿAbd al-Muʿaz al-Sattar, Hasan al-Banna's personal emissary to Palestine in 1946, also served as a school inspector and director of Islamic sciences in the Ministry of Education, in addition to coauthoring “numerous textbooks for the nascent Qatari school system in the early 1960s.”Footnote 48 These Brotherhood members, able to disseminate their ideology through schools, sparked a desire for greater organization of the Muslim Brotherhood at the grassroots level.
Islamist influence increased when Arab nationalism retreated across the region in the 1970s. Brotherhood sympathizers, especially the young cohort, many of whom had studied in places with active Muslim Brotherhood movements, insisted that an official organization was needed to oversee the group's activities.Footnote 49 Founded in 1975, the Qatari Brotherhood affiliate, was, in the words of its then leader Jassim Sultan, “just a collaboration, a simple thing.” Testifying to the informal nature of the organization, even at its inception, he went on, “only one page described the organization, and no one knows where that paper is.” Footnote 50 The group focused primarily on daʿwa (lit., making an invitation, or proselytization), intense study of shariʿa, organization of sporting activities, and integration into the community, attracting young people in particular to Brotherhood-sponsored trips, sports, charity, and public lectures.Footnote 51
As they endeavored to expand and formalize the group's activities, however, Qatari students returning from studying abroad in states with active Brotherhood affiliates clashed with the past generation. Whereas the older members were skeptical about the utility of ramping up the Muslim Brotherhood's activities, the younger generation saw no reason not to expand the Brotherhood's presence.Footnote 52 Without elections to contest and lacking the need to provide social services or the ability to compete with the government in service provision, yet still hoping to spread its ideology, the Qatari Brotherhood found itself in a unique position. Younger members began raising questions about what form the organization would take in the future (whether a political bloc or cultural group), the impact it could have on Qatari society, and its overarching goals. In part to resolve differing approaches among the leadership and to maximize the organization's impact, beginning in 1980–81 and until 1991 the Qatari Brotherhood undertook an extensive two-part study.Footnote 53 The first portion, published as Hawla Asasiyyat al-Mushruʿ al-Islami li-Nahdat al-Umma . . . Qiraʾat fi Fikr al-Imam al-Shahid Hasan al-Banna (On Basics of the Islamic Plan for the Renaissance of the Umma: Readings in the Thought of the Martyr Imam Hasan al-Banna),Footnote 54 focused on the ideology of al-Banna.Footnote 55 Interestingly, the listed author was ʿAbd al-Hamid al-Ghazali, a member of the Shura Council of the Egyptian Brotherhood and the leader of its political department for nearly eight years. The use of such authorship may have indicated tensions between the Qatari affiliate and the mother organization because the volume was seen as a critique Muslim Brotherhood ideology, which the authors considered in need of update.Footnote 56
The second part of the study remains unpublished and concerns the affiliate of the Brotherhood in Qatar specifically.Footnote 57 This study was essentially “an intellectual and organizational dissection of the Brotherhood” in terms of its structure, communication, leadership, prevailing culture, and goals, as well as the feasibility and risks associated with pursuing them.Footnote 58 Important questions included: Is there a real plan for the organization? How much has been achieved (in Qatar and elsewhere)? What remains to be achieved?Footnote 59 Generally, “it finished with one of the problems that pushed the re-evaluation to begin: that the Muslim Brotherhood's plans generally lacked clarity—what did it want exactly? And how would it get there?”Footnote 60
After years of research and inquiry, the study revealed that many members considered the Qatari Brotherhood to have failed to tailor Hasan al-Banna's ideology to the Qatari situation, particularly due to the group's immutable commitment to ideological purity.Footnote 61 Members questioned the need for a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate in Qatar, a conservative and religious society with few major economic, social, or political problems or openings.Footnote 62 Such questions led to broader discussion about how Islamist movements can survive in Gulf states where governments derive legitimacy from Islam and therefore dominate the religious outreach sphere.Footnote 63 As Jassim Sultan put it, “by study and research, the pitfalls were obvious. The program doesn't fit Qatar. There is a major defect in the theory.”Footnote 64
The Qatari Muslim Brotherhood was officially disbanded in 1999 by a vote among its members.Footnote 65 The process of its dissolution, about which little is known, was completed in 2003. Qatari Brotherhood members have, for the most part, remained silent about the reasons for the organization's dissolution, and a great deal of speculation remains as to the motivations behind it.Footnote 66 The primary explanation, as Mustafa ʿAshur explains, is that the Brotherhood's formal structure in places like Qatar became “an irrelevant matter,” as the group can easily offer the same services, such as lectures, religious study groups, youth activities, and social meetings, without having any defined structure.Footnote 67
Harboring no ill will toward the government and able to function as they wished under its supervision, Qatari Brotherhood members simply did not require a separate organizational structure, which was weak and informal from the start. As an ideological movement, rather than an organization, the Brotherhood could maintain its followers and popular relevance, which it may have lost as an institutionalized entity: “ideas live longer than any organization,” as Jassim Sultan explained.Footnote 68 Maintaining structural flexibility, individual members of the movement have maintained a degree of influence over political debate and policymaking, at least with regards to social policies, within the country without inciting government action against it.
Still, determining what exactly it means to be a Muslim Brotherhood member in a state where the group lacks a formal organization is challenging. Making matters more difficult, few Qataris publicly identify as members of the Brotherhood even if they agree with its ideology, making it difficult to determine the organization's domestic popularity and strength. A difference in labeling comes into play: as Gulf analyst Michael Stephens put it, “it is very complicated because lots of Qataris agree with the Muslim Brotherhood but don't even realize it.” The conflation between support for the Brotherhood and allegiance to conservative Islam further complicates the study of the organization in isolation in Qatar. In Stephens's words, “lots of Qataris agree with what [Shaykh Yusuf] al-Qaradawi is saying, but they see this as being religious, not as being Muslim Brotherhood.”Footnote 69
All in all, Brotherhood sympathizers, at least in the explicit sense, do not constitute a large proportion of Qatari society. One Qatari interviewee said that he would “be surprised if there was any substantial number [of Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers].”Footnote 70 Others maintain that the organization is “just a few people,” and remains highly informal.Footnote 71 In terms of activities, Qatari Brotherhood sympathizers still gather primarily to recite the Qurʾan, with the organization existing on a structural level only at the smallest unit, the usra (lit. “family,” or the smallest unit of Muslim Brotherhood structure). Without means to disseminate its ideology through an official publication or even a formal meeting place, the Qatari Muslim Brotherhood does not appear to harbor ambitions beyond continuing intellectual and spiritual pursuits, which is not to say that these do not have a social agenda or political influence.Footnote 72 Still, because many Brotherhood members hail from prominent families, the organization is “hardly subversive.”Footnote 73 This nonconfrontational relationship has led the government to be more accepting of the Brotherhood. As a former advisor to the Amiri Diwan put it, “why should the government put pressure on the Muslim Brotherhood when [Brotherhood members] don't challenge it? The two are interdependent.”Footnote 74
Despite the informal nature of Brotherhood influence inside Qatar, since the Arab Spring the government has become more responsive to Islamist-leaning demands for social reform. It has been particularly attuned to complaints about the availability of alcohol, banning its sale in December 2011 throughout the Pearl-Qatar development.Footnote 75 Shortly thereafter, objections from locals led to the closure, in a number of days, of a branch of the Qatar Distribution Company in 2012, which sells pork products and liquor, on the manmade island.Footnote 76 In 2015, the Qatar Tourism Authority began prohibiting hotels from serving alcohol in the nine days preceding Eid al-Adha, in observance of Dhu al-Hijja, during which hajj is undertaken.Footnote 77 Such restrictions may signal the government's efforts to balance the desires of national and expatriate populations—a challenge unique to the super-rentier states. In the words of an advisor to the amir, Shaykh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, “alcohol is not essential to modernization.”Footnote 78
Other recent examples of the government taking a cue from public complaints include the removal in 2013, after only three weeks, of a statue of football player Zinedine Zidane head-butting another player on the Doha Corniche.Footnote 79 Locals had found the statue inappropriate, as the depiction of humans and animals is discouraged in the hadith and the act portrayed was considered “morally wrong.”Footnote 80 The grassroots campaign to foster modest dress, launched in 2012 as “One of Us” and recently rebranded as “Reflect Your Respect,” represents another effort by nationals to maintain traditional values, fostering “modesty in all behaviors.”Footnote 81
The above actions suggest that a certain vocal segment of the Qatari population favoring conservative social policies can influence the government's domestic policy but chooses to do so within the rentier framework, using informal means such as majālis or social media. Similar efforts elsewhere in the region are led by the Brotherhood yet seem to have been informally arranged in Qatar. As Kitschelt explains, “political opportunity structures influence the choice of protest strategies and the impact of social movements on their environments.”Footnote 82 In a context wherein politics remain largely uninstitutionalized, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Brotherhood exerts political influence without a formal structure. In such an environment, it is also difficult to discern which political trends are most popular among nationals. While support for the above social changes suggests a leaning toward the conservative social program favored by the Brotherhood, it could also reflect the desires of a conservative Wahhabi population, though Wahhabi movements tend to be less organized in agitating for the implementation of specific social policies. In sum, regardless of the lack of Brotherhood institutionalization, Islamism clearly has political weight inside Qatar.
THE EMIRATI MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AND RED LINES FOR RENTIER ISLAMISTS
Though the first decades of the Emirati Brotherhood's history resemble those of the Qatari branch, as early as the 1990s its activities were limited due to government fears of Brotherhood influence, and by the end of 2012 it was definitively driven underground. As in Qatar, at the start of the 1970s, Emirati students who had returned from study abroad brought with them the idea of establishing a group to organize activities similar to those conducted by the Muslim Brotherhood in countries where they had studied.Footnote 83 In 1974, three years after the UAE's independence, Jamʿiat al-Islah wa-l-Tawjih al-Ijtimaʿi (Reform and Social Counseling Association, hereafter Islah) was established as the local arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Dubai. It was only the second civil society organization to receive approval from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.Footnote 84 In fact, Vice President and Dubai leader Shaykh Rashid bin Saʿid Al Maktoum donated money toward the establishment of the group's headquarters in that emirate, signaling the government's willingness to patronize an Islamist group as a bulwark against Arab nationalism.Footnote 85 As described by one prominent Emirati political scientist, “the initial drive of the Muslim Brotherhood was that the UAE is not Islamic enough, not justice/injustice, or reform.”Footnote 86
After the founding of Islah in Dubai, branches were established in the northern emirates of Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah, with Shaykh Rashid donating toward the cost of their establishment.Footnote 87 At the end of the 1970s, Emirati President and Abu Dhabi ruler Shaykh Zayid bin Sultan Al Nahyan also contributed land for the establishment of a branch of the group in that emirate, yet an affiliate ultimately never gained permission to form.Footnote 88 Interestingly, a branch also never opened in Sharjah. Former Vice-Chairman of Islah in Ras al-Khaimah and lawyer Muhammad al-Mansuri considers the Sharjan government's refusal to allow for the opening of a local branch of Islah to reflect the prevalence, at that time, of Arabism and nationalism, rather than Islamism, in Sharjah. That emirate's strong financial ties with Saudi Arabia also may have squelched any potential Brotherhood movement's emergence in that emirate, with the kingdom a more likely source of religious inspiration. In Ajman, though a branch of Islah was not established, as Mansour al-Nogaidan explains, “the Brotherhood settled for subordination to Jamʿiat al-Irshad wa-l-Tawjih al-Ijtimaʿi [Association of Guidance and Social Counseling].”Footnote 89
The organizational structure of the Brotherhood in the UAE was more complicated than in Kuwait and Qatar due to the state's federalist form. Each Islah branch was, according to Wanda Krause, “broken down according to emirate with a further hierarchy of sections and subsections, typically classified according to emirate cities and rank of members, each with different halaqas [religious study circles focused on Islam and the Qurʾan] having different curricula.”Footnote 90 Like Brotherhood affiliates elsewhere in the Gulf, though, the Emirati Brotherhood was involved in social and cultural activities, namely sporting and charity events.Footnote 91 For instance, “internal activities include those related to Ramadan fasts, such as sponsoring and holding iftars (dinners to break the fast), as well as courses in members’ houses for their halaqas.”Footnote 92 In addition, Islah used its magazine, al-Islah (Reform), to advocate for a variety of social reforms, particularly the development of Islamic education, censorship of Western media, and encroachment of foreign businesses and culture in Emirati society.Footnote 93 Examination of issues of al-Islah magazine from the 1970s and 1980s demonstrates that the organization's aims were primarily social and local.Footnote 94
Islah members also rose to prominent ministerial positions. Because Brotherhood members in the UAE, as in Qatar, came largely from among the educated classes, they were strong candidates for such government posts, particularly in a young country with a small population. As one Emirati political scientist observes, “the Muslim Brotherhood had a good understanding with government and good backing from business.”Footnote 95 In fact, in the formation of the first-ever independent Emirati government in 1971, founding member of Islah from Ras al-Khaimah Shaykh Saʿid ʿAbd Allah Salman was named minister of housing; in 1977 Muhammad ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Bakr, another Islah member, was appointed minister of justice and Islamic affairs and awqāf—both on the recommendation of Vice President Shaykh Rashid.Footnote 96 From 1977 to 1983 Shaykh Sultan bin Kayed al-Qasimi, head of Islah in Ras al-Khaimah, oversaw curricula for the entire UAE. When Shaykh Salman became minister of education and chancellor of UAE University (UAEU) in 1979, the ministry became heavily influenced by Muslim Brotherhood ideology.Footnote 97 During his tenure, the ministry banned gender mixing beginning in the fourth grade.Footnote 98 Music was also prohibited, and girls could not participate in sports.Footnote 99 In addition, teachers sympathetic to the Brotherhood were hired in large numbers.Footnote 100 By the beginning of the 1980s, the Brotherhood controlled the management of curricula. In the late 1980s, after the replacement of Shaykh Salman, Islah embarked on a serious campaign opposing the non-Islamist education minister's decision to institute standardized basic education for all students entering UAEU. Footnote 101
Brotherhood members also rose to government positions in the judicial sector. According to Mansour al-Nogaidan, “al-Islah members with Law studies, who were the best prepared at the time, became influential within the Ministry of Justice.” He adds that “for more than 20 years al-Islah worked side by side [with] the Emirati government, cooperating in areas of social and cultural development.”Footnote 102 In a less institutionalized way, Brotherhood organizations in the UAE influenced youth through student activities such as summer camps and scout groups. In 1982, as Chancellor of UAEU, Shaykh Salman established the Union of Emirati Students in the institution. Having done well in the elections of university student committees beginning in 1977, Islah dominated student union elections until 1992.Footnote 103 At that time, the government tried to depoliticize campuses by replacing the union in 2012 with student council polls contested by individuals rather than political blocs.Footnote 104
By the 1990s, members of the Emirati Muslim Brotherhood had come to exert considerable influence on Emirati society through their positions in the educational and judicial systems. Around the same time, investigations by Egyptian security services allegedly proved that individuals involved in Egyptian Islamic Jihad had received monetary donations from Islah's Committee for Relief and Outside Activities, provoking government suspicion.Footnote 105 The prevailing argument became that the Brotherhood is, at its core, an international organization, “imported by Egyptians,” and uses outside groups to further its ultimate aim, the establishment of a single Islamic state.Footnote 106
During the same period, the government began investigating the influence of Brotherhood members within the education sector when promising scholarship applications from non-Islamist students were rejected. It found that the Brotherhood members largely controlled the distribution of educational awards.Footnote 107 Trying to regain control, in 1994 the government dissolved the Brotherhood's previously elected boards of directors,Footnote 108 placing them under the supervision of the Ministry of Social Affairs. Furthermore, the government restricted the political activity of the Brotherhood's members, banning them from holding public office.Footnote 109 Notably, the Ras al-Khaimah branch of Islah was forced to curtail its external activities yet was exempted from ministerial control,Footnote 110 due to protection of that emirate's sympathetic ruler Shaykh Saqr al-Qasimi.Footnote 111 Until the most recent crackdown in 2012, the group remained independent, as Shaykh al-Qasimi “rejected the dissolution of al-Islah because he felt it played a role in preserving the youth.”Footnote 112
An already tense relationship between the Emirati government and the Muslim Brotherhood became more confrontational following the attacks of 11 September 2001. That two Emiratis were involved in the violence made the government eager to prove to the international community that it would not tolerate religious extremism or in fact any independent religious movement. As part of this effort, Emirati authorities increased internal security.Footnote 113 In 2002, the State Security Directorate arrested over 250 individuals on charges of terrorism, though most merely harbored Islamist sympathies and were released by 2004.Footnote 114 The government attempted to persuade Islah to disband around this time, but the organization refused, also declining to divulge names of its members.Footnote 115 Frustrated with its inability to use institutionalized means to voice its grievances, some members of Islah took the opportunity to foster co-operation with a growing reform movement.Footnote 116 This loosely organized movement agitating for political reform, composed of secular and Islamist groups and tacitly supported by Islah for years, became stronger and more active during the Arab Spring, as the government continued to promise (yet failed to deliver on) greater political participation to citizens.
In March 2011, a petition addressed to President Shaykh Khalifa and the Supreme Council of Rulers and endorsed by 133 intellectuals, among them Islah members, led to the most significant government crackdown on all strands of opposition. It was written following the government's failure to introduce legislation to increase the pool of voters for the FNC. The petition called for universal suffrage in an elected legislature that would have expanded constitutional powers to produce laws and supervise the executive.Footnote 117 Critically, it marked the first time that the secular and Islamist opposition came together in such a public political undertaking.Footnote 118
In early April 2011, five of the 133 signatories of the petition (the so-called UAE5),Footnote 119 said to be its primary backers, were arrested. They were charged, as explained by Amnesty International, with “‘publicly insulting’ the UAE's President, Vice-President and Crown Prince in comments posted on an online discussion forum. . . . All five were convicted in November 2011 after a trial that failed to satisfy international standards of fair trial, and sentenced to prison terms of up to three years.”Footnote 120 Shortly after their sentencing, the five were released through a presidential pardon due in large measure to international media attention.
Hoping to deflect attention from incidents such as the arrest of the UAE5, the government made limited efforts to respond to domestic political opposition, while boosting financial disbursements to “buy off” dissidents. For the September 2011 elections the government expanded the FNC electorate to 12 percent of the national population.Footnote 121 It also granted huge public sector pay increases (in some cases up to 100 percent) and boosted welfare benefits by up to 20 percent, in addition to signing a $2.7 billion agreement to help poorer nationals pay off outstanding loans.Footnote 122 The expansion of the FNC electorate was the sole political reform yet resulted in no substantial change: only half of the FNC is elected, the body itself still lacks legislative power, and a meager 28 percent of the eligible voters took part in the election.Footnote 123 The government's largely economic response to political opposition reflects traditional understandings of the rentier state wherein the government's primary power lies in its control of rents.
Although Islamist and secular activists worked together on the petition, the government exaggerated links between them to dramatize the danger to the prevailing system. The government charged that Islah exploited the controversy surrounding the UAE5 to increase its own influence, “using the umbrella of reform to reach their goals” of larger government takeover.Footnote 124 Now seeing Islah alongside the broader political reform movement and thus as a viable political challenge to the state, the government began targeting the organization. Islah had strayed outside of its government-granted sphere of influence. When Islah bucked against the rentier state, agitating for political rather than social reform, its existence became intolerable for the central Emirati government.
By the end of 2012, ninety-four alleged members of Islah (the UAE94) had been arrested. Attempting to justify its harsh response, in September 2012 the government claimed to have received confessions from imprisoned Islah members that their organization had an armed wing and aimed to overthrow the existing order to re-establish the caliphate, a claim not substantiated by any independent Islah documents or public statements.Footnote 125 Islah denied all charges, stating that the group is “pacifist, civilian and moderate and has never, and will never, choose to take up arms.”Footnote 126 There is no evidence, from examination of the organization's magazine or in conversations with its members, that it has any intention to challenge the government.
Beginning in March 2013, the ninety-four arrested in 2012 were tried together, eight in absentia. In July 2013, sixty-nine of the defendants, including the eight outside the country, were convicted and received sentences ranging from seven to fifteen years, while twenty-five were acquitted.Footnote 127 The UAE94 were denied the right to appeal, and the prosecution used evidence drawn primarily from confessions allegedly obtained through ill treatment or torture.Footnote 128
In November 2014, the government further crippled Islah, listing it and eighty-one other domestic and international organizations as terrorist groups. Although this list included violent organizations such as al-Qaʿida and ISIS, it also comprised decidedly nonviolent groups like the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, in addition to advocacy groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Cordoba Foundation in Britain.Footnote 129
The government appears to have greatly exaggerated Islah's popularity and political aspirations to justify such a complete and rapid crackdown. During the January 2012 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) National and Regional Security Conference, then Chief of Dubai Police Dhahi Khalfan went so far as to state: “The Muslim Brotherhood is a security threat to the Gulf, and is no less dangerous than Iran.”Footnote 130 Emirati Foreign Minister Shaykh ʿAbdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan similarly denounced the Brotherhood as “an organization which encroaches upon the sovereignty and integrity of nations” and called on Gulf governments to work against its expanding influence.Footnote 131 Such language illustrates the government's attempts to use fear of emerging Islamist political parties in the region as an excuse to dismiss Islah's demands for political reform.
It is uncertain how much support Islah held among nationals, especially given its organizational division by emirate. Estimates of its membership range from 400Footnote 132 to 20,000.Footnote 133 The state's crackdown on the Brotherhood, though, indicates the government's perception that the organization held more popular support than is likely. In fact, as Christopher M. Davidson notes, “Abu Dhabi's crown prince [Shaykh Mohammed bin Zayed] provides a good insight into the strategy, having been recorded in a 2006 US diplomatic cable referencing a meeting with US diplomats as stating that ‘if there were an election [in the UAE] tomorrow, the Muslim Brotherhood would take over.’”Footnote 134 The administration clearly considered Islah to be an existential threat, making the Emirati population more willing to accept increased central government control to counter it.Footnote 135
Shaykh Mohammed's fears directly disprove a major prediction of rentier state theory: he found that hydrocarbon wealth could not “buy off” political competitors, particularly religious ones. The findings in this article instead support Kitschelt's prediction that “the less innovative and more immobile a political regime, the greater the risk that this inflexibility itself will trigger demands that go beyond the immediate policy issues to ones threatening the legitimacy of the regime.”Footnote 136 When the Emirati Muslim Brotherhood, in response to increment clampdown on its independence, began to bite the hand that fed it, so to speak, by openly advocating political reform, the Emirati government resolved to move decisively against it.
CONCLUSIONS
Whereas rentier state theory anticipates that citizens will form opposition blocs only when their stake in rent income is threatened,Footnote 137 this article has shown that in super-rentier states ideology has motivated citizens to join Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, even though such states enjoy the highest rentier packages in the region. As Lisa Anderson explains, “grievances came to be cast not in terms of material demands but in the idiom of moral responsibility and ideological commitment,” reflecting the opposite of what rentier state theory predicts.Footnote 138 Notably, many members of Brotherhood affiliates in the Gulf come from the educated elite whom one would not expect to join such a group out of a feeling of disenfranchisement. Economic motivations in super-rentier states, as expected, hold limited appeal in spurring political action. In fact, “under rentier conditions, loyalty to the system is the most rational course of action.”Footnote 139 Only when ideology is involved are independent social movements likely to emerge in super-rentier states.
Available political opportunities undoubtedly shape how groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood operate. Rather than attempting to challenge the state by providing alternate services or running for elections, rentier Islamists seek to gain positions and influence through the state, for they know they will be unable to effectively challenge it and ultimately cannot survive without it. Though they have largely been removed from state positions in recent decades, today Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in Qatar and the UAE use various social networks to exert influence within the rentier framework, promoting Islamist social policies in particular. Brotherhood-run social organizations inform their members’ views about a government's duty to its citizens as well as how political discourse should evolve. As explained by Quintan Wiktorowicz and Suha Taji Farouki, “rather than directly confronting the state or participating in formal politics, Islamic nongovernmental organizations are engaged in social struggle at the level of cultural discourse and values.”Footnote 140 In other states in the region, this influence can be translated into institutionalized political power, yet it remains the primary mode of Brotherhood activity in Qatar and the UAE. Notably, in the UAE some members of the Muslim Brotherhood did attempt confrontation in conjunction with the reformist opposition, albeit through the uninstitutionalized means of petition, and were severely punished as a result.
As other scholars have noted, there is thus no one form of Islamism. And as my work demonstrates, Brotherhood movements behave in similar ways in super-rentiers that feature striking economic, political, and social similarities, yet have made different calculations in recent years due to those governments’ varied stances towards them. While the Qatari Muslim Brotherhood chose to disband itself, the Emirati branch sought to effect political change by forming a coalition with secular political groups. Certainly, as Salwa Ismail explains, “the fortunes of Islamism as a political movement are conditioned by the structures of opportunities, and by political configurations and contingent identities.”Footnote 141 Further, governments view the Brotherhood differently depending on their political calculations. Emirati rulers remain particularly attuned to the political capital held by their domestic Brotherhood movements and consider them an existential threat. Qatar, in contrast, has granted the Muslim Brotherhood more freedom, reflecting the authorities’ belief that cooptation and containment are more effective and sustainable than crackdown.
Because they gain appeal primarily through an ideology unaffected by the presence of wealth, in the coming years Islamist organizations will not become any less influential in the wealthiest Gulf monarchies, despite campaigns against them. Rather, they will take on different forms depending on the political freedom afforded them. Because rentier Islamists do not need to provide tangible goods for their followers, they have been allowed more freedom in terms of structural appearance. And because Islamists remain rent-seeking actors in such states, they are far more gradualist in their pursuit of Islamist reforms. As Sherri Berman points out, similar to the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, “societal and cultural transformation has preceded, and perhaps substituted for, political change: here ‘a grassroots movement emerg[ed] from the streets . . . to transform the social structure from the bottom-up.’”Footnote 142 Rentier Islamists will continue to agitate for social reforms above all else, reflecting Hasan al-Banna's notion that broad-scale change emerges out of grassroots change.
Islamists adapt their activities to restrictive systems. Their ideology cannot be “bought off” with government disbursements, and their activities are more difficult to halt in the informal sector and due to their largely gradualist nature. By creating ideological links at the grassroots level, they amass long-term popular support. Rentier Islamists will continue to hold sway primarily through the informal sector. Their methods for garnering support are not threatened by changes to the Muslim Brotherhood's strength elsewhere in the Middle East due to the power of their ideological message and ability to adapt to different political environments.
