Shadi Hamid > Quotes

“Even what may have seemed, in retrospect, like minor quibbles—over the particular wording of sharia clauses, for example—reflected fundamental divides over the boundaries, limits, and purpose of the nation-state. For liberals, certain rights and freedoms are, by definition, nonnegotiable. They envision the state as a neutral arbiter. Meanwhile, even those Islamists who have little interest in legislating morality see the state as a promoter of a certain set of religious and moral values, through the soft power of the state machinery, the educational system, and the media. For them, these conservative values are not ideologically driven but represent a self-evident popular consensus around the role of religion in public life. The will of the people, particularly when it coincides with the will of God, takes precedence over any presumed international human rights norms.”
― Shadi Hamid, Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East

“Religious conservatism, even of the most uncompromising sort, had gone mainstream, and this was a reality the Brotherhood could not ignore. The Brotherhood, as always, was pragmatic, but pragmatism can cut both ways. In some contexts, the desire to maximize votes pulls ideological actors to the center. Other times, it may push them to adopt more conservative positions that they would otherwise avoid. Democracy opens the door to the proliferation of Islamist parties, which outbid each other over who can be more “Islamic.”
― Shadi Hamid, Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East

“On matters of economic policy and social expenditures you can always split the difference,” the political scientist Dankwart Rustow once wrote, decades before the Arab revolutions.14 How, though, do you split the difference on religion? At stake in most Arab countries are a set of still-unresolved questions of identity, of how society is ordered, and how people live their lives. This, unfortunately, is the stuff of raw, existential battles.”
― Shadi Hamid, Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East