Chapter 4 looks at the restitution of liberalism as a potential model for political change during the Arab Spring and then its inability to shape outcomes in Egypt and Syria due to structural, organizational, and international reasons. The chapter refutes the narrative that the Arab Spring was the result of a leaderless movement of an alienated youth and loose associations of activists. It asserts that this overall analysis ignores the years of liberal activism against the extant patterns of domination and authority in the region, and the fact that protestors rallied behind a set of ideas that were consistently different from the ones rallied behind in the 1950s–1960s.What is missed in most studies is the deep and consistent transformation and reformulation of the object of discontent. Millions confronted their States despite the threat of violence, and in so doing they showed that liberal notions were vibrantly hiding in plain sight.

Chapter 2 sheds light on the liberals’ public and private work and discourse within the authoritarian and repressive sociopolitical context from the 1960s to the end of the 1990s. It particularly focuses on their “hidden” and not so hidden transcripts, in other words their work beyond their seeming silence and absence, to shed light on their ongoing active engagement despite the contextual conditions forcing them to largely go underground. It argues that while the liberal democrats were eclipsed by the region’s authoritarian regimes, by illiberal leftists, and conservatives such as the pan-Islamists, they nonetheless remained vital and continued to have a sociopolitical impact through other means than via direct political engagement and a focus on the institutions of the State.

The brief but powerful emergence of the liberal intelligentsia and liberal democratic ideas and assertions in the aftermath of the Arab Spring (2011–2012) have revealed a different dimension to Arab society and political life and provide insight into a parallel reality and movement bubbling along beneath the surface. And while the conservatives and the autocrats quickly took over the popular uprisings, liberal notions, ideas and actors enjoyed immense popularity and displayed vitality, courage, and defiance in that moment before their forced eclipse. The question thus emerges: Where did these ideas and people come from, and where are they now?

Chapter 1 offers historical context and an overview of the intellectual and political history of Classical Liberalism during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the region. The focus of the chapter is on how classical liberals approached questions of despotism, civil freedoms, rights and democracy, and on how they have conceived of political change. These questions have been ignored within most of the academic literature, which has tended to focus on these intellectuals and politicians’ pan-Arabist and nationalist agendas instead of on their liberal and democratic outlooks. Overall, the chapter provides an essential historical and analytical background about the region’s earliest liberal intellectual and political history; it shows that liberal concepts were not “foreign concepts” imposed suddenly on an unsuspecting public. The chapter informs the rest of the study and sets the boundaries of the movement.

The book has re-read historical, intellectual, and political trends, as well as political and civic activism, a rereading that indeed reveals that both autocracy and liberalism are rooted in and have shaped concomitantly social and political developments in the region, even though they have embodied different communities and occupied different -- and at times parallel -- socio-political and cultural spaces. This rereading also reveals a liberalism that is rooted in the region’s political history and exposes an original, organic, dynamic and adaptable, enduring, and significant and relevant contentious movement that is hidden in plain sight.

In Sudan, a deep economic crisis in the 1990s initially facilitated the consolidation of an Islamist-commercial elite that forged an alliance with a segment of the military and capture the state. Having gained control of the state, the Islamists marginalized rival groups in civil society, while continuing to recruit more jihadist elements among poorer segments of the population. In addition to their control over the economy, Sudanese Islamists also consolidated their rule by taking over the civil service in a systematic fashion. However, with the steep decline in labor remittances as a result of a regional recession, and the loss of access to revenues from oil resulting from the secession of South Sudan, the Islamist authoritarian regime lost the financial basis that underpinned its patronage networks. This chapter explains how the latter gradually resulted in popular protests and the demise of the Islamist authoritarian regime in Sudan.

In Egypt, by the mid-1980s, as a result of a deep economic crisis, thousands of Islamic voluntary associations managed to develop a parallel economy and a parallel welfare system. In some instances, these modes of informal organizations translated into an Islamist-inspired challenge to the state. The rise in political influence of the Islamic Investment Houses dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood aided that organization in its recruitment programs that expanded its membership. Moreover, where radical Islamic groups were able to exploit informal financial networks and procure informal labor contracts for their supporters, particularly in the informal settlements around Cairo, they used these as bases of power and influence. Using private sources to establish social networks in defiance of state regulations, organizations such as the militant Islamic Group (al-jama’at al-Islamiyya) have sought to build, literally, a “state within a state.”

The emergence, and proliferation, of Islamist militant organizations, ranging from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al-Shabbaab in Somalia, to Boko Haram in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa, has once again demonstrated that political Islam is an important global political issue. It has also highlighted a number of challenging, but increasingly crucial analytical questions: How popular a force is militant Islam, and how is it distinguishable from more conservative and moderate forms of Islamic activism? Does the rise of Islamic militancy across many regions of the Muslim world represent a “clash of civilizations,” or is its emergence a result of locally embedded, but globally linked, economic and social forces? And, finally, given the considerable diversity of socioeconomic formations within Muslim societies when, and under what conditions, do religious rather than ethnic cleavages serve as the most salient source of political identification?

Chapter 7 explains how militant Islamist leaders adapted “traditional” Egyptian rural norms in ways that allowed them both to supplant the political power of local notables, while simultaneously institutionalizing extortion practices and implementing their own brand of “law and order.” Islamic militants exploited the high levels of social and economic uncertainty in Cairo’s informal housing areas. An important reason behind the popularity of radical Islamists among local residents is due to the ways in which their leaders have utilized highly coercive methods to settle local disputes and enforce informal labor contracts for their members, while simultaneously preaching against the ills of conspicuous consumption in their sermons and imposing strict Islamic modes of conduct. The chapter shows how the socio-economic conditions that have served, as a “recruiting ground” for Islamist radicals was made possible as result of economic change at both the international as well as domestic level.