Islam and the Arab Spring

Guests

Samina Yasmeen is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Western Australia Larbi Sadiki is a Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter in the UK Ahmad Shboul is honorary associate professor in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at The University of Sydney Lily Rahim is ssociate rofessor in Government and International Relations at The University of Sydney Omid Tofighian is a tutor in philosophy at the University of Sydney, and a tutor in humanities and languages at the University of Western Sydney Transcript Gary Bryson: Hello, and welcome to Encounter, and a program this week which tackles some big questions about Islam, democracy, and the Arab Spring. I'm Gary Bryson. Samina Yasmeen: There have been theological debates that have constantly looked at the idea of an Islamic State in terms of whether human will is paramount, or a divine will is paramount. And in its very extreme form, those who believe in the divine will being paramount, they argue that what it means to be part of a political system or of a societal structure has been preordained and does not change. Larbi Sadiki: There are lots of issues which remain unsettled in Islam, the question of democracy, the question of gender equality, can a woman for instance be President in a Muslim country? And I guess really, within the context of the Arab revolts, that's really what people are trying to determine. Omid Tofigian: I think that in its very nature what they're doing is democratic, because you're allowing all of these different worldviews, all of these different symbols and elements to coexist together and participate and communicate with each other. Gary Bryson: Over the past few months we've watched, fascinated, as one oppressive regime after another in North Africa and the Middle East has been challenged by its people in the socalled Arab Spring. Egypt and Tunisia have both ousted their authoritarian leaders, Libya is in the middle of a bitter civil war and violent unrest continues in Yemen, Syria and Bahrain.

But as old regimes are torn down and new ones established, some timely questions can be asked about how these majority Muslim countries will take up the challenges of liberal democracy. While the Arab Spring is primarily a political movement, how will its leaders negotiate the sometimes difficult spaces between Islam, democracy and secularism? Progressive Muslims have been wrestling with these issues for some time, and there's certainly no shortage of ideas about redefining the relationship between Islam and the state. Last April, Sydney University's Department of Government at International Relations, along with the Sydney Democracy Initiative, held a symposium in which some of these ideas were aired. The symposium was called 'Spirited Voices from the Muslim World'. It dealt with a range of ideas about Islam, Democracy and gender rights, part of which touched on the events of the Arab Spring. We'll hear from some of the symposium's speakers in this program. Let's begin with Samina Yasmeen, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Western Australia. Is there in fact an Islamic way of looking at the events of the Arab Spring? Samina Yasmeen: As someone of Muslim background who works in political issues, I can't but look at it in the same way as maybe a lot of my colleagues would be looking at it. So I'm keen to point out that there isn't something like an Islamic way of looking at it. There's different views on why it's happening, and what creates it and how would it be sustained and what are its implications. And I think around the Muslim world, the dominant understanding is that in the Middle East, in the Arab world, authoritarianism had created conditions where a lot of people felt that there was knowledge deficit, there was democracy deficit, and there was an inability of the people to rise up against that. Now these ideas had been coming up in the Arab Human Development Report from the beginning of this last decade, but because they were combined with a population increase and a younger population, it was bound to have an effect on how the system would relate to this youth. I think in a way what happened was that under the growing pressure of disillusionment, alienation, lack of making their needs, one person rose up, met a reaction and then everyone really followed it through. And of course everybody talks about the role of social media in it. But I think there's more to it. It's not just social media, it's also I would say, the cumulative disillusionment of the slightly older generation that had been looking at the issues and saying, 'We have to react to them', and probably they're feeling very good that the younger generation has come in to take the baton and go forward. Now what does it mean in terms of Islamic understanding? I mean you could give it a very Islamic colour and say that Islam enjoins upon its followers to stand up against authoritarianism and really create a system in which the will of everyone is recognised and realised, so you could try and give it a Muslim colour but I think I would be more determined to look at it as a sociological phenomenon which finally led to what we are saying now. Larbi Sadiki: I think Islam is weaved into the cultural, political quilt. Gary Bryson: Larbi Sadiki is a senior lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter in the UK, and the author of Rethinking Arab Democratisation: Elections without Democracy. I spoke to him on a rainy morning in Sydney where he's currently on sabbatical.

Larbi Sadiki: There is always the temptation to invoke Islam in anything that happens in the Arab world and specifically in relation to the revolts of Tunisia and Egypt. And I'm pretty sure if one is called upon to invoke Islam, you can find an Islamic narrative of how people for instance are mobilised, I know that lots of scholars have rushed into this discourse of post-Islamism, which means discarding political Islam from the foment that's been unfolding in the Arab world, and I think that is hasting into making assumptions about the inability of political Islam to engage with this moment of resistance because if you look at the history, especially, when I say history, like the long duree, the long historical stand, you will find that Islam has always been part and parcel of any attempt, whether it is an attempt for state-making, state-unmaking, calls for social justice, resistance of tyranny, resistance against invasion etc. etc. Specifically of course, we cannot really say that there is a monopoly by political Islam as far as mobilisation and organisation of resistance against tyranny in Tunisia and Egypt has been happening, but definitely, definitely, there is I think a core of the mobilisable public opinion in the Arab world in relation to these revolts which invoke messages taken directly from Islam. Samina Yasmeen: Now those meanings are really questioned by other people who say that human beings, because they are the chosen by God, even over and above angels, they have such a special place that human will has a right and a responsibility to be present in determining how the structures are made. So the will of people, their understanding of what it means to be a Muslim and how a system would be organised, is very important for these people. Now these debates at one level are theological debates. What is a State? What is a society? What are the component parts of it? Who is in and who is out? Those who are in what are their responsibilities and rights and what are their relationships to those who are out? But I think at another level it's a very lived-in debate, because it's not just simply about what do I think about primacy of human will or divine will, it is about what does it mean for me in my real life. For everyone it's a question of if I believe in the primacy of human will, does that mean that I have to live in a certain way, and what does that mean for me as an individual, in my family, in my society, as an economic being, as a social being, as an intellectual being, all those debates, all those questions. And they're really answered by people on all sides. Even what does it mean for someone to be a man and have responsibilities, or a woman to have responsibilities, children, elderly, the lot. Once you start looking at it like that, this whole question of democracy and expression of democracy in Muslim States, we have to accept the fact that at one level theological debates would make an important impression on how people look at their relationship to the system. So it can shape what they need to do and how they need to run the system. Gary Bryson: Samina Yasmeen and Larbi Sadiki. Ahmad Shboul is honorary associate professor in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Sydney University. Ahmad Shboul: All these countries have majority Muslim populations, but it doesn't mean that people always think about politics in religious terms. There are people who do, but the majority don't. I think what triggered the movements has to do with problems in economy, especially in political corruption. I think there is a perception that the leaders of these countries for the past few decades, in some cases four decades like Libya for example, don't have real political legitimacy. And they haven't actually provided what their people need. So that was the trigger,

and I think also the globalisation, privatisation, although many people became rich, the majority of the populations haven't. So there are all these factors. Now when the Islamic dimension might come in is in the case for example of Egypt, where there's been a strong movement which is the Muslim Brotherhoods from the twenties of the last century although it was suppressed under Nasser from the mid-fifties until recently. They might, people think that they might fill a vacuum if the secular forces in society don't organise themselves into parties and get enough seats in parliament and so on. The other factor is sometimes those in power, you know, that includes Mabarak before he went down, and Saleh of Yemen, and even Gaddafi, they have used the fear of fundamentalism or alQa'ida or whatever group they might have, saying 'Look, if I go, they will fill up the vacuum, there will be chaos', and they're often addressing Western powers, saying, 'You know, if you don't support me, that's what you'll have'. So in that respect there's a negative dimension. But I can assure you that none of these countries where you have the uprisings was the uprising initiated or dominated even up to now by Muslim factions or by people who are actually coming from an Islamist, that's to say political Islamic platform. Larbi Sadiki: Those who come into this debate from the angle that the Qur'an is the pronouncement constitution, might be a little bit sort of far-fetched maybe in their imagining of community and of Islam. So I think it's a workshop, that's what it is, Islam for me is like an ongoing workshop. There are lots of them of course, diverse workshops, and I hope people at least refer to that revered tradition of reasoning. You've got it, it is there, apply it, deploy it, implement it, use it. Gary Bryson: There seems to be an agreement then, that there's no real Islamic take on the events of the Arab Spring. But nevertheless, many Islamic thinkers concern themselves precisely with ideas about modernity, specifically democracy, liberalism and secularism. Let's grapple for a moment with the last of these. Here's Ahmad Shboul speaking at the Sydney University symposium. Ahmad Shboul: There are conflicting attitudes to secularity or secularism in Arabic discourse when you are looking at the work, or people are identified with a kind of moderate Islam, if you like. And I mention one example, that's to say an Egyptian lawyer and former magistrate who actually expressed his unhappiness about secularism. He said the real test for conflict between the Islamic identity and Arab national identity, is the role of secularism. And he says as long as Arabism is away from secularism, it's close to Islam. The closer it fits the Qur'an the more it moves away from secularism and so on. And now what is curious is this same magistrate is the most prominent member of the constitutional committee that has been recently appointed in Egypt to revise the constitution. So if that's what he thinks, we are not going to have a secular constitution in Egypt, obviously. In the next couple of pages I deal with the contribution of Mohammed Arkoun to the debate about secularism. There are three dimensions here: religion, the world, and the state, and in a similar discussion between religion, this world and politics, he goes on to discuss this. But

basically he says, 'We need a new epistemology' and here there is a very interesting reference back to a significant school of thought from ninth century Iraq, especially in their distinction of the two natures of the Qur'an. The Qur'an is on the one hand a divine book which is infinite, in fact there's a verse in the Qur'an that says 'The words of God are so infinite that if you've got all the oceans [as ink] and you've got all the forest as pens, you would never run out of the words of God'. And that is a subtle description of the preserved book, up there. And the other side of it is the volume, the Qur'an which we read, and which is actually expressed in the human language. Then he goes on to say that there's no need to sanctify the Arabic language. The Arab language is like any other human language, it just happens to be the language of the Qur'an and there's no need to sanctify it or sanctify the heritage or culture that is written in it in Arabic. Part of this also is how this question of avoiding reason and avoiding secularism plays in the hands of some Islamist preachers and advocates, especially when they present certain slogans which are actually social or political slogans, but expressed in religious terms, and therefore make it impossible for you to debate them. And he makes a long list of these, such as you know we're talking about the true religion, 'this is God's book', 'this is the Prophet's sunnah', 'we are one Islamic ummah,' 'there is God's absolute formal justice'. Or the worst one from my point of view is 'God is the ruler of the world', in almost Sultanic terms. And you know, from that then comes things like, 'why don't we apply the sharia' without defining it, or 'Islam is the solution and Islam is the answer,' without telling us how and so on. So this is one of the problems where obfuscation creates problems for people who want to have debates about religion in society. Ahmad Shboul: The relationship between religion and politics in Egypt, and for that matter in other Arab countries, is very complex. I think there was a kind of current of secular thinking in Egypt which goes back at least to the nineteenth century, not just among political leaders who were pragmatic but almost among Muslim intellectuals. People like Mohammad Abdul and so on, I would say they're quite rational and secular. They would go as far as saying, 'Look, the leader of a Muslim country, even the judge in a Muslim society is not necessarily a religious figure. His position is civic.' So there is that kind of understanding. But even if you go back to the pre-modern period, not in Egypt, but also say in Islamic thought, there's always been a very strong rational current, even in Islamic theology. Of course you have the fundamentalist people who are stuck to the text in a narrow interpretation, but in general because of the influence of Greek philosophy and logic and so on, like in mediaeval Christianity and early Reform churches, you have that kind of rationalisation. So that is there, but also in terms of political practice, people have been thinking in secular terms, but even people like Nasser who was clearly secular, he couldn't ignore the religious sentiment of the population, this is true even now in the United States and other places. You know, I like that expression of one modern historian who said 'You cannot actually fillet out religion from society'. But that is different from saying, let's express everything in religious terms. Samina Yasmeen: I can understand the argument for secularism because you do need, especially in multicultural, multi-religious societies, a space which is free of any one group's vices, and so it has to be level playing field for everyone. And if that means a set of rules that everybody agrees upon, irrespective of their religious backgrounds, I think that's a very good space to be in. But does that mean that when Muslims are operating in the secular space, they deny the Islamic

identity? I don't think so. And it's not just simply a Muslim experience. I think any one of us who has any idea about any kind of spirituality, will bring that with us. We don't keep it outside the door when you're walking into a space, you bring it with you. And I think secular spaces need to be the spaces where we come with those ideas, but we come with the responsibility that they don't give us the right to silence other ideas. And in that sense I think secularism can exist and it should exist very comfortably with people who believe in things provided they have this sense of responsibility. Gary Bryson: Can you tell me something about how important secularism is or might be to these emerging democracies now in North Africa and the Middle East? Larbi Sadiki: I think the mobilisation happening in Egypt and Tunisia - and this is really an emancipatory moment, really in the full sense of the word, religiously, politically, culturally, etc. etc., What they have to revisit is the political template of people like Mubarak, Ben Ali, because really what they were able to do was actually to institute a system of de facto secularism in the Arab world, which means what, subverting the Ottoman paradigm. In the Ottoman state, the Caliphate was a monopoly of religion over politics. Now, post-independence, Arab states subverted that paradigm so politics became in charge of religion, so that when you talk about the azha [for example], whether it's the theological side of it, the administrative side of it, the ritualistic side of it, the juridical side of it - all of that was founded by the state. So states were able to recruit religion for the purpose of the ruler, whatever that purpose is, whether it's secular nationalism whether it's Arab socialism, pan-Arabism, making war, making peace etc. etc. Gary Bryson: Larbi Sadiki. Any discussion of Arab politics has to take into account the central importance of history, whether it's the Ottoman empire or the more fraught legacy of Western colonialism. This history produces what seems to Western eyes to be a fear of modernity. Ahmad Shboul. Ahmad Shboul: The main problem is the connection between modernity and colonial powers that have dominated the Arab world during the nineteenth century and most of the first half of the twentieth, and they still in a sense, impinge on the Arab world, politically, economically and culturally. So there is that kind of tension, you know, you can't give me modernity; at the same time you are giving me oppression or humiliation or depredation, exploitation, all these things. That's one thing. I think the other complexity has to do with the confusion between change and progress. I think one of the interesting things that some Arab political leaders, especially in the old monarchies, would say, 'Look we would love to have Western technology, we would love to have airports, aeroplanes, even universities and so on, but we don't want to change our ways.' So there's that kind of conservativism which sometimes translates into the next point which is fear of modernity because it means change. In other words, there's a strong current of conservatism in some Arab societies and certainly in certain political elites. I'm thinking mainly in the Arabian peninsula. And also in some other countries. So this is this kind of problem, and some intellectuals talk about fear of modernity in that sense. It's not like everybody's afraid of modernity. It's what it implies for perceived values for society and what also it implies for instability for the ruling elites.

Samina Yasmeen: I think of it as lessons learned, unlearned, and then re-learned. So Muslim history initially was a democratic history, so it was a lesson learned because of Islam. Then it was unlearned because of rise of powers, even within the Muslim communities who were ruling. They did have very strong examples of being very authoritarian as well. And then colonisation. So that lesson was unlearned, and now it's being re-learned. But it doesn't mean that it's not in the Muslim books, it just means we have to come back to it. And again, learning takes time. So I think we need to be - not gentle with Muslim communities - but just understand that it is a human process, and by expecting too much, too soon, what we're really getting into is an assumption that somehow the West has to set the pace at which everyone else must move. That I think is a dangerous precedent because that's not democratic, it doesn't give you the right to move along the path that you want to move along. Gary Bryson: Samina Yasmeen and Ahmad Shboul. And you're with Encounter on ABC Radio National, this week discussing Islam, democracy and the Arab Spring. Lily Rahim is an Associate Professor in Government and International Relations at Sydney University. She also contributed to the university's forum on 'Spirited Arab Voices'. And she reminded us that there is an important middle ground between an Islamic state and a secular one. Lily Rahim: What I'm focused on is to look at that middle ground, the Islamic states at one end of the spectrum and then we have the secular states, the other end of the spectrum. Places like Turkey and other places in North Africa. But what I'm interested is to look closely at the states. Most Muslim states are actually in the middle, quasi-secular. There's a lot of research been done to highlight this. Many of us that are not too aware of the Muslim world, we often imagine that they would be closer towards the Islamic state model. And that is not so. And I think this point is also being highlighted quite well in the recent developments in the Middle East, sweeping right throughout the Middle East, the political crises, where we find that if we watch clearly, the conversations, the views put forward by civil society, actors, even representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, they're not asking for an Islamic state, neither are they are asking for a secular state, and this middle ground is interesting, in that there is a strong theological basis to support this middle ground. Concepts such as shura, wasatiyyah, which is moderation, middle-path, justice, and so on and so forth. So there is that theological basis in the text and so on. So the point here is that in my case studies of Indonesia and Malaysia, places I'm most familiar with, we find that these states, these states that were created and established after the Second World War, these post-colonial states, we find that if we look closely at these constitutions, this was the ideal of the post-colonial elites, the founding fathers and mothers of these post-colonial states. This was their political vision; to establish a quasi-secular state. This is the vision of Malaysia's Tunku Abdul Rahman, this is the vision of Soekarno, this was you could say, the vision of Nasser and you could say Ali Jinnah and others as well. So very much middle ground. And this is their nation-building stance or vision; reconciling Islam, Muslim majority States reconciling Islam within a secular-oriented constitutional and political framework.

Gary Bryson: Lily Rahim. The politics of the Arab Spring countries also owe much to the history of Islam itself. The divide between Shia and Sunni Muslims for example, goes right back to the days of Mohammad. It's a divide which makes a marked difference to the shape of political Islam in each nation. Larbi Sadiki. Larbi Sadiki: The two main branches of Islam are Shia-ism and Sunni-ism, and Sunni Muslims claim that they're not theocratic in the sense you don't have a hierarchy. You don't have monopoly over hermeneutical practice or exegesis by a self-appointed class. That does not really exist. Now in Shia-ism of course you've got almost like the equivalent of a temple of wisdom, king philosophers, people like Khomeini. When you say Ayatollah, it literally means 'a godly miracle'. Someone who's committed forty, fifty years of their lifetime in the seminaries of Shiaism whether in holy cities like Qom or Najaf. They claim that actually they know Islam, they know the Qur'an etc. etc., and I guess really that's something that we respect, because in Shia-ism definitely the tradition and the institution of itjihad is far more vibrant, it has been far more vibrant than in Sunni Islam. But who is in charge of understanding, distilling the meaning of Islam is different. In Sunni really you don't have that kind of class elite of exegetes. But you have that in Shia-ism. Ahmad Shboul: The prophet Mohammad was essentially a religious leader, but he was also a political leader, not because he wanted to be a political leader or religion wanted him to be a political leader, but because of the needs, the circumstances of the time. There was no state in the space he was operating in, unlike Christ within the Roman Empire. And that is why Islam concerned itself with trying to establish some kind of law and order. But that establishment of law and order itself was conducted, if you like, in civic terms, and I think that's created a lot of confusion, but if you take the Caliphs, you know, the Muslim leaders who came after him, essentially to me they were political leaders. Larbi Sadiki: Even the prophet when he knew he was departing this world, he did not leave a testament of who should succeed him at all. So he left the whole question of successful leadership, open to the people who come after him to decide, and I think that's a pearl of wisdom for other Muslims interested in liberalising or democratising. Of course within the panoply of Islam or political Islam, you've got a variety of narratives, and I guess these narratives, to summarise the debate, which is like a huge debate, you've got two things: You've got like Islam with capital 'I' which is like the ideal of Islam and then you've got with a small 'i', the interpretation of Islams. Gary Bryson: Larbi Sadiki and Ahmad Shboul. The interpretation of Islams, with their varied and different cultural flavours, can shed some light on how Islamic scholars today think about ideas such as democracy and secularism. Speaking at the Sydney University symposium, Samina Yasmeen introduced us to the work of Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, a Pakistani Muslim theologian. Samina Yasmeen: The reason why I have chosen Ghamidi, is that that unlike the debate in Pakistan which had been couched in terms of the secular about human will and orthodox who

talk about primacy of divine will - where Ghamidi stands out very clearly is that although he occupies the end of the spectrum where divine will is paramount, the way he talks about these ideas and the way he presents what it means to be a Muslim, is so open and so flexible that it actually presents the opportunity of integrating ideas that have also emerged on the primacy of the human will and of the spectrum. Or another way of saying this is that he occupies the orthodox space, but is one of the most educated liberal modern thinkers that you could think of in Pakistan at the moment. Now what is Ghamidi's idea of the State or democracy? The starting point for his idea of democracy is that it is a government through consultation. Shura is at the heart of what he thinks. Organisations of Muslims in any country, but definitely in Pakistan, need to start work. Consultation is the one in which every participant is equal, and the consultation is based on the precondition that those who are consulted are not just simply consulted because you have to tick the box, but you're consulted because it is an essential part of getting access to the knowledge and ideas of others. And other preconditions of consultation is that people who are consulted are extended respect and the recognition, because if you don't extend them that recognition, it impacts on their willingness to share their ideas, but it also, if they're not taken into account, then it creates a sense of disillusionment and you will miss out in a future contribution of ideas. So the consultation among the selected few is the basis of the state for Ghamidi. But then the question really is that when the consultation has to take place, who are the ones who engage in this process? What are the criteria for choosing as to who the shura would be? His idea is that the process of consultation must represent communities and they must enjoy the respect of the people. So the respect and the reliability of those who engage in this process is an essential condition for his notion of who rules an Islamic State. The idea that you need to enjoy respect is not of short-term relevance, in fact what he says is that respect has to be earned over a period of time and it must be sustainable. So it's only over a period of time, experience, interaction, that certain people develop the respect of the community, and in that capacity they acquire the right to be part of that group that decides what happens in the Muslim community. Samina Yasmeen: I think Ghamadi is one of those who in our age at least, is very significant in terms of how he combines Islamic understanding with ideas that are very modern. He presents it as an Islamic solution, but when you look at it, elements are so similar to what we think of in Western democracies. His argument is that people who enjoy the trust of their respective communities have the right to represent their interests. And that these rights must be taken into account by the groups that make decisions, and it's through that consultation that they need to come to a decision. Even the leadership within that smaller group of representatives can't be established in an authoritative manner, it has to come through a process of consultation. Gary Bryson: And he also says that that leadership is not God-given? Samina Yasmeen: He says that leadership is to grow out of that consultative process, and religious clergy, by way of being religious clergy and ulema, don't have a pre-ordained right to lead. It's not that he says that you have a religious realm and you've got a political realm, the

connection's there, but he says that to start off with a demand that only the ulema have a right to run the system is actually missing the point, because the ulema can't deliver in the way that the system requires them to deliver. It's very important to understand that he's not saying it's his idea, he's saying it's his interpretation of what the Qur'an has already established, or what Islamic tradition has already established. So it's marrying Islam with the idea of democracy, not as being in a Western space but being very clearly located in Islamic space. Gary Bryson: Samina Yasmeen. And you're with Encounter on ABC Radio National, where we're exploring ideas about Islam, democracy and the Arab Spring. MUSIC: Arabic hip-hop Gary Bryson: And so to voices of a different kind. One of the biggest factors in the Arab Spring is just how visible these events have been to the eyes of the world. Despite attempts by the Mubarak regime in Egypt for example, to shut down the internet, news was spread instantly by Twitter and Facebook. We saw the same thing in Iran when young people there contested the election results. As in the west, social media has been embraced by the youth of the Arab world, bringing a new dimension to any discussion of modernity and Islam. And it's not just social media. According to Sydney University philosopher, Omid Tofighian, digital technology itself, including music, art and film, is changing young people's perspectives on life in the Islamic world. Omid Tofighian: As a result of digital technology and new genres of art and new interactions being made with different cultures and different religious views, I think new questions are being evoked. And I think the fact that these new questions are coming up and these new questions are themselves being questioned, and the fact that a lot of especially youth, are not necessarily looking for a definite answer but are more interested in engaging with the questions, I think that's a pivotal factor in understanding what's happening in North Africa and in the Middle East. Gary Bryson: Omid Tofighian presented a paper at the Arab Voices symposium called 'DigiTafsir: Transforming Middle-Eastern Societies in a Digital Age'. Omid Tofighian: 'Digi-tafsir', it means a kind of interpretation that is modelled or has been transformed by digital technology. The more I looked into it I realised that there are new forms of interpretation taking place - of tradition, culture and religion, and politics - and these forms of interpretation weren't available before, they weren't being practiced before, but I think with the introduction of digital technology, particularly in these artistic genres, people are able to say things that they didn't have the opportunity to say before. MUSIC: Arabic hip-hop Omid Tofighian: Hip-hop is a very interesting example because it is often the voice of the marginalised, a voice of the oppressed, and also it has a very urban, gritty urban feel to it, people

can empathise with it in all parts of the world and I think the popularity of hip-hop worldwide is a testament to that. People immediately are attracted to it, the rhymes, the rhythms, the beats, the synthesizing, the different sound effects, turntable-ism, the art of turntable-ism was extremely attractive, and also the fact they could involve or include some indigenous factors into hip-hop without distorting it or without moving away from what hip-hop stands for. So basically Iranian hip-hop developed, like Egyptian hip-hop has developed, like Palestinian hip-hop has developed, or even Saudi hip-hop is now developing, and you have some really interesting hip-hop artists in Iran, and this has flowed into or influenced other genres. So now you have rock fusion, using the same sorts of techniques that hip-hop artists used for synthesizing and mixing and it's had a huge impact and it's actually allowed people to express new feelings, new emotions, and look to the future, in terms of how they want to see their art and culture in society, and politics, developing. If we use this to understand what's happening in the Middle East now, young people have an attachment to certain religious sentiments. They have an interest in certain kinds of philosophy or certain kinds of theology, but also they have an interest in so many other things as well. They have an interest in international film; they have an interest in international sport; also in the political situation in other parts of the world. They enjoy hobbies that we enjoy here in the West, different genres of music, different kinds of fashion, and all of these things make up their identities - the same way that Australians or Americans or Canadians amalgamate different factors to create their own identities. Now the interesting thing is that with digital technology, people in the Middle East, especially young people, people in North Africa, especially young people, are able to amalgamate or mould all of these things into a new unity that represents their own unique way of living and way of thinking. Gary Bryson: Omid Tofighian. So the pressures for change in the Arab world are, as we've seen, multi-faceted - an amalgam of desires for political and social freedoms which are both Islamic and deeply connected with the global community. Perhaps a positive sign of this can be seen in the changing nature of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Long associated with extreme political Islam, the brotherhood too, it seems, is getting with the times. Ahmad Shboul. Ahmad Shboul: The people who are now leading the Muslim Brothers, especially their new political party - which is called Party of Freedom and Justice by the way, it doesn't have an Islamic title - they are mostly more progressive, I would say. Definitely relative to the old guard, and they are talking essentially in terms which can be described as secular, certainly liberal. They are saying you know, 'We don't want to monopolise the political scene; we believe in multi-party system, we want our brothers, the Copts, the Christians to participate with us. We are not excluding anybody', and so on. So this is their language. The other thing is they are actually now saying, and this is official, that they want the people to be the source of political authority. Until recently their slogan was 'God Is the Source of Political Authority'. So there is a shift. Larbi Sadiki: Political Islam itself is not monolithic. Political Islam say in Yemen is not the same as political Islam in Egypt. You've got actually brands of political Islam. You've got like

the Wahabi branch of political Islam which tends to, let's say, monopolise idioms like jihad, and jihad becomes solely understood as a martial ethos, when in fact it is not. It can be in other narratives and discourses greater jihad, which means spiritual jihad, jihad for development, jihad for political equalisation, levelling the playing field, so that you've got greater access to equal opportunity, gender-friendly societies, more democratic governments etc., etc. Whether they succeed or fail that's another matter altogether, but the discourse is there. Do they mean it? We have to give them the chance to be there first, and judge them by their actions. Ahmad Shboul: There is a liberalisation in these movements because people look around them and they see that the extremists might attract media attention, they might attract people who are talking about security and terrorism and so on, but in reality on the ground they don't have much popularity. So they want to have the middle ground, if you like, they are looking around them and trying to respond to what they perceive as public opinion in general. And also many of them, I think, are educated enough to come to a kind of liberal interpretation of Islamic teachings about politics and society. Gary Bryson: Where do you see these movements going? What needs to happen in order for there to be peaceful and effective transitions? Larbi Sadiki: I think in Egypt, for instance, Egypt is a diverse place. I think adapting to diversity is a huge, huge challenge. Possession of truth? No-one possesses the truth. Even if your political activism is underpinned by religious ethics, religious principles, I don't really think anyone possesses the truth, because ultimately this is human reasoning, which can be false and right, and can also be, or must be, revised, because that's what it is. The political arena is really an arena of revision, continuous revision. You don't preach a level where you say 'I know the truth', or 'I know what politics is about or what the country needs'. And I think the challenge of diversity, non-monopoly over public truth, and definitely, definitely, power-sharing, that is really important, and really I stress again the principle of self-restraint by Islamist parties. Gary Bryson: Are you hopeful that democracy will flower in those countries? Samina Yasmeen: I'm more hopeful now than I was, say, six months ago. But again, too many things have happened in other areas when people have risen up and then it turned out that things didn't come the way that they wanted. That's where I think it's very important that people who initially came out on the streets and changed their governments out of passion, that they now move towards reason. And that reason could come either from their very secular ideas, or it could come from their Muslim understanding, but I think it's only when they move into that reason and accepting responsibility that they would be guaranteed more of a positive outcome. And if that doesn't happen, and that's quite possible that it wouldn't happen in every space, then we are in for more difficult times, because then everyone's idea of what it means to be an Egyptian, in a post Arab Spring era, it may differ and therefore the solutions may differ and then there'd be more instability. Gary Bryson: Samina Yasmeen, and we also heard there from Larbi Sadiki and Ahmad Shboul.

My thanks to the Department of Government and International Relations, the University of Sydney, and to the Sydney Democracy Initiative for their help with this program. And a link to the Symposium, 'Spirited Voices from the Muslim World' can be found on our website. You'll also find further information about this program, including a written transcript. Technical production today by Michelle Goldsworthy. I'm Gary Bryson. Thanks for listening.