The opportunities and limits of Islamist ideological developments on the rights of non-Muslims and women

Abstract

AbstractMost academic scholars of the Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded Islamist organisations seem to agree that these groups have come to accept the nation state and the rules of the democratic game over the past few decades. At the same time, several scholars have shown in their work that reforms and developments among Islamists with regard to the state and democracy have not been accompanied by similar trends on religious minority rights and especially women’s rights. The long-held Islamist ideal of an Islamic state in which Islam provides the identity of the state remains difficult to square with full and equal citizenship for non-Muslims. Similarly, Islamists have been willing to make concessions with regard to women’s rights by reinterpreting Islamic tradition, but this has not moved as far as their revisionism with regard to the state and democracy. What is holding them back? The objective of this special issue is to begin to answer this question through various case studies, all of which focus on gaining greater insight into (the development of) views on the rights of religious minorities and women among non-violent Islamists since the Islamic revival in the Middle East and North Africa in the 1960s.