“Political Islam and the Road to Liberal Democracy: The Case of the Jordanian Islamic Movement”

Lamis El Muhtaseb
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins University SAIS Bologna; Visiting Scholar, European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy


The seminar is based on research that looks into political participation on the part of Islamist movements and parties and the prospects for these ideological and political organizations eventually adopting liberal democracy. By concentrating on the Jordanian Islamic movement I aim to answer important questions such as how ‘democratic’ is the ideological change that the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm, the Islamic Action Front Party, have accomplished so far? What are the factors that have led to this change, and have determined its nature? Are the theoretical frameworks, such as the social movement’s latest approaches and that of the party organizational evolution sufficient to study moderate Islamist movements that operate within an open political system and participate, to an extent, in its political dynamics? Finding answers to these questions will hopefully shed light on the ongoing political events that are taking place in Arab countries such as Egypt and Tunisia among others. Moreover, such an analysis may help make predictions of the outcome of the Arab Spring in these countries in relation to the ideology and behavior of the Islamic forces now in power, especially their commitment to democracy.

LAMIS EL MUHTASEB
A post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University SAIS Bologna and a visiting scholar at the European University Institute (EUI), El Muhtaseb is currently working on a series of lectures on political Islam and democracy in the Middle East (e. g. the ‘democratic’ language of contemporary political Islam) to be given at the EUI. In contact with various research centers to conduct comparative field studies on the process of democratization in the Middle East, her work concentrates on Islamist movements and parties’ role in such process. In cooperation with the Faculty of Law at the University of Bologna Muhtaseb has delivered a number of seminars on constitutional reforms in Jordan and other specific issues related to human rights in Muslim countries. She holds a B.A. in English Literature and Political Science from Jordan University in Amman. She obtained an M.A.I.A. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University SAIS Bologna (her thesis is a study of the intellectual and political change of political Islam). She obtained her Ph.D. in Comparative and European Studies from CIRCaP, the Center for the Study of Political Behavior, University of Siena, Italy. Her concentration was in IR and the political behavior and ideology of Islamist movements in the MENA Region. Before she began her higher education, worked as a researcher at both, the UNESCO Office for Education and the Arab Bank in Amman, Jordan.

Publications: "The Intellectual and Political Evolution of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood", Geopolitics of the Middle East, July-September 2008. A chapter on the Jordanian Constitution, inclusive of the recent democratic and constitutional reforms following the Arab Spring in The Codice delle Costituzioni Straniere to come out by the end of 2012. An article on the Jordanian Islamic movement’s role in the ‘Jordanian’ Arab Spring in Devenir Révolutionnaires. Au Coeur des révoltes Arabes (Forthcoming 2013).


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