JMD on NBN: Courtney Freer on Rentier Islam
COURTNEY FREER
Rentier Islamism
The Influence of
the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2018
September 11,
2018 James M. Dorsey
Courtney Freer‘s new
book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of
the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies(Oxford University
Press, 2018) contributes significantly to an understanding of one of the most
controversial political groups in Middle East politics. Widely viewed as a
player that cannot be excluded from the political process in the region, the
Muslim Brotherhood is at the crux of political conflict, particularly in Egypt,
where its president, Mohammed Morsi, was toppled in a military coup in 2013,
and in the Gulf where it is at the crux of a dispute that has pitted Qatar
against an alliance led by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Courtney
Freer’s study of the Brotherhood in the Gulf portrays the development of an
opposition group in an autocratic environment. It also is a study of a group
that operates in an environment in which one of its key appeals, the provision
of social services like healthcare, is of little use because the oil-rich Gulf
states introduced welfare states that offered their citizenry cradle-to-grave
social security as part of the social contract. Similarly, the Brotherhood’s
role as a provider of a religiously couched identity had to compete in
societies with strong tribal allegiances and governments that co-opted Islam as
part of their legitimization. Nonetheless, the Brotherhood played a key role in
state building in the Gulf where highly educated members of the group fleeing
persecution in countries like Egypt and Syria found employment, particularly in
education and the judiciary. By tracing the different trajectories of the
Brotherhood in the Gulf ranging from Kuwait where an institutionalized
parliamentary system allowed it to ease into mainstream politics to the UAE
where it came go be seen as an existential threat alongside all expressions of
political Islam, Freer fills a vital gap in the literature about a region that
is in throes of volatile, often brutal transition.
Listen to the
podcast with Courtney about her book at: https://newbooksnetwork.com/courtney-freer-rentier-islamism-the-influence-of-the-muslim-brotherhood-in-gulf-monarchies-oup-2018/
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School
of International Studies.
Comments
Post a Comment