Shadi Hamids Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East is a fantastic read for those interested in going beyond the superficial analysis of political Islam in the post-Arab Spring Middle East. Offers very interesting insight into the Muslim Brotherhoods history of political opportunism, why they have increasingly paid lip-service to democracy over the recent decades despite their ultimate stated commitment to long-term goals that are not truly democratic, the counter-intuitive result of repression actually leading to moderation of the group and distancing themselves from their more unsavory militant offshoots, the reaction of secular Arab despots to American ultimatums for reform and democratization over the past decades and how that opened up alley-ways for the MB and their political aspirations, the deep seated paranoia embedded in the Muslim brotherhood and their subsequent mistrust of the international community, etc. Most current and comprehensive work on the Muslim Brotherhood, a group so often talked about but so little understood, that I have come across.
Posted on: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 18:22:24 +0000