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.

Drawing on classical antisemitic themes, this chapter reconstructs the growth of antisemitism in the modern Muslim world.

This chapter analyses what happened to the undesired citizens of the Kemalism during the Kemalist nation-building project. The ‘other’ to the state’s desired citizen of Homo LASTus were practising Muslims, Islamists, non-Atatürkists such as leftists and socialists, non-Muslims, Alevis and Kurds who were discriminated against by the Kemalist state in a variety of ways. Not only were attempts made to assimilate or dissimilate them, but they were also denied important bureaucratic positions, despite officially being ‘equal citizens'.The chapter looks at the ‘others’ to the Homo LASTus in order: practising Muslims and Islamists (opposite to the laicist), leftists–socialists–communists (opposite to the Atatürkist), non-Muslims and Alevis (opposite to the Sunni Muslim) and Kurds (opposite to the Turk). Before concluding, the chapter discusses how, for a variety of reasons, these minorities felt a need to hide their identities in public, resorted to dissimulation and were constructed by the majority as villains in different conspiracy theories linked to the insecurities, anxieties, fears and paranoias of the state and the nation.

This chapter is meant for comparative purposes to test my hypotheses outside Egypt and Syria, my two major case studies. Tunisian autocrats Habib Bourguiba and Zein al-ʿAbidin Ben ʿAli strengthened the police and the ruling party as a counterweight to the armed forces – in other words, they centered their coup-proofing strategy on counterbalancing. In Libya, Muʿammar al-Qaddhafi crafted a complex coup-proofing system mixing divide-and-rule tactics with counterbalancing and ethnic stacking. I study the evolution of coup-proofing in both countries and show that divergent military behavior in 2011 – i.e., splintering of the armed forces in Libya vs cohesiveness in Tunisia; defection in Tunis vs loyalty in Tripoli – reflects the institutional legacies previously established by various coup-proofing tactics. Just as I did for Egypt and Syria, I put several other hypotheses previously posited to the test in this chapter.

This chapter examines how domestic actors exploited the international context to execute their policy agendas in the Turkish context. It demonstrates how conservatives, who were heavily dominated and controlled by the secular elite, used Turkey’s European Union membership bid as an opportunity to constrain bureaucratic authoritarian institutions, including the military, and liberalized the Turkish political system. The chapter also shows how conservatives built a broad social coalition with liberals, social democrats, and minorities by using Europeanization as an instrument. This coalition, which included the Christian minority, facilitated the passing of reforms in favor of religious minorities.

This chapter looks at the interactions between the women’s movement, the king, the Salafis, Islamists, and the Islamist party, Party for Justice and Development (PJD), and the role the interactions between these actors played in bringing about gender reforms in Morocco. It shows how the symbolic uses of women’s rights made women and women’s rights a focal point of the contestations between the palace and the parties and a key instrument in the struggle against religious extremism. The chapter shows how the PJD changed its position regarding women’s rights for reasons of political expediency. It explores the role of the women’s movement in the middle of this unfolding contest. The chapter thus takes us through the main elements of the hypotheses outlined in Chapter 1 as they apply to Morocco.

This chapter looks at the interactions between the women’s movement, the king, the Salafis, Islamists, and the Islamist party, Party for Justice and Development (PJD), and the role the interactions between these actors played in bringing about gender reforms in Morocco. It shows how the symbolic uses of women’s rights made women and women’s rights a focal point of the contestations between the palace and the parties and a key instrument in the struggle against religious extremism. The chapter shows how the PJD changed its position regarding women’s rights for reasons of political expediency. It explores the role of the women’s movement in the middle of this unfolding contest. The chapter thus takes us through the main elements of the hypotheses outlined in Chapter 1 as they apply to Morocco.

This chapter shows how women became the focal point of the tensions between the Islamists and those who opposed extremism both symbolically and existentially during the Black Decade. It shows how in the post-civil war period women, their bodies, and ultimately women’s rights became a centerpiece of the regime’s fight against fundamentalism. Legal reform, which included an emphasis on political rights, was part of a strategy against extremism, which also had a negotiated and military dimension to it. In more recent years, the struggle has shifted to the cultural arena as women, including young women, push back against Islamist proscriptions on women’s dress. As a consequence, Algeria has seen the demise of militarized and political Islamist influences.