Contenu du sommaire : Avec ou sans les Frères. Les islamistes arabes face à la résilience autoritaire

The Field Marshal and the Sheiks: The Regime's Religious Strategies and Their Complications in al-Sissi's Egypt This article examines the strategies that Field Marshal al-Sissi's regime in Egypt has implemented to manage the religious field in the aftermath of the 2013 coup d'État that put an end to the “revolutionary parenthesis” of 2011-2013, a period marked by the electoral triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, the regime follows a twofold strategy: consistent with the precedent set under Mubarak's government, it seeks to establish the only Islamist actors that supported the coup d'État, the Salafist movement and its al-Nour party, as a legitimist substitute for the Muslim Brotherhood; in more “Nasserian” vein, it seeks to restore power to the institutions of a hegemonic, official Islam in order to regain control of the country's mosques. This article examines the motivations of the religious actors involved in these strategies and considers the tensions that these strategies and their interrelations generate in the political and religious fields. This case study contributes to discussions regarding the sources of religious legitimization for Arab authoritarian regimes.

Under the Rabia Sign: Circulations and Segmentations of (Trans)National Mobilization(s) in Turkey In summer 2013, following the Egyptian Army's ouster of President Morsi and the massacre of his supporters, a hand gesture featuring four outstretched fingers, thumb folded back, became a symbol of solidarity with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Though it has since spread across the world, it is in Turkey that this gesture, known as the “Rabia sign” in reference to the site of the massacre, has had the most success, even as it takes different meanings. How is one to understand its adoption and adaptation in the Turkish context? Is this process due to the presence of many MB exiles in this country? This study shows that, far from merely constituting a context of reception, the national and transnational Islamic spaces in Turkey have coproduced the sign and its interpretations. It demonstrates that the circulation of this sign has been intertwined with the synchronization of mobilizations in these spaces but also with their segmentation, particularly in what concerns these spaces and the diasporic space of the MB.

The Syrian Rebels of Ahrar al-Sham: Contextual and Organizational Motors of Deradicalization in a Time of Civil War Originating in the jihadist movement, the Syrian rebel group Ahrar al-Sham has since its creation in 2011 pursued a path of ideological deradicalization. Reaching completion in 2017 when the group officially adopted the Syrian national flag, this transformation is reflected in its adoption of a “revisionist” stance that gradually distanced it from the most radical factions and drew it closer to the dominant revolutionary movement. This trajectory may be interpreted in the light of contextual factors – specifically, the influence wielded by state sponsors of the Syrian uprising and the 2011 emergence of a popular revolutionary project presenting a credible ideological alternative to that of the jihadists. Yet the response of Ahrar al-Sham to these external stimuli can only be understood by reference to its organizational dynamics – that is, its precocious decision to break with transnational jihadi networks and the establishment of a collegial decision-making structure that allowed the group's reformist wing to consolidate itself at the expense of its doctrinaire rival. This study of the deradicalization process in a context of civil war seeks to contribute to discussions of the dynamics of moderation among Islamist groups, which have hitherto mainly been studied in peacetime or end-of-conflict contexts. It also contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms of ideological transformation among non-state armed groups, a question broadly neglected by theoretical work on civil wars.

Sunni Islamist Reconfiguration and Sectarian Polarization in Wartime Yemen Coming four years after the peaceful mobilizations of the “Arab Spring” of 2011, the Yemeni conflict is often hastily interpreted in geopolitical terms as an expression of the sectarian rivalry opposing Saudi Arabia and Iran. We seek to move beyond this approach, examining the politico-religious reconfigurations that have taken place in this country since 2013 in a context of violent conflict. This article considers the processes by which, breaking with a particular sectarian arrangement, the Sunni-Shia polarization was constructed and the effects thereby produced within the Sunni Islamist field. The relegation of the al-Islah party, which represents the Muslim Brotherhood, has been accompanied by the growing power of Salafist entrepreneurs. This dynamic is a sign of the reconfiguration of mobilized resources and affirms the prestige of military engagement. We therefore consider the armed conflict a privileged moment for observing processes of identity construction as they are reflected in the statements of Islamist entrepreneurs, the alliances created at the front and confrontations.

The Internet and Jihadist Propaganda: The Polycentric Regulation of Cyberspace In recent years, governments and civil society groups have blamed the Internet for spreading jihadist content. States, technology companies and civil society groups have established monitoring practices and solutions to address these concerns, which have assumed an international dimension. Taken as a whole, however, such efforts remain scattered and fragmented. The present article seeks to take stock of this complex system by adopting a polycentric governance approach. This approach contrasts with a state-centric vision to the degree that it favors establishing networks among centers for regulating global problems at several levels. The present article draws on a detailed cartography of the various measures that have been taken to regulate jihadist content. In addition to demonstrating the pluricentric and heterogenous nature of these measures, we present them as an “agonistic” system in which relations are simultaneously marked by conflict and mutual awareness. Yet conflict does not preclude action: over time, polycentric authority structures have given rise to a new architecture and new norms intended to facilitate control of information flows.

An Election Held by Gangs? Observation of an International Observation Mission to the 2014 Presidential Election in El Salvador How is the gaze of the international electoral observer constructed? While the normalization, generalization and consequences of international election observation systems, seen as tools for “promoting democracy”, have been extensively analyzed, very little attention has been given to the concrete ways in which these missions produce data. On the basis of participant observation of a mission coordinated by an international organization during the 2014 presidential election in El Salvador, this article studies the manner in which the criteria of what is “worth observing” are defined and the degree to which the system succeeds in shaping and directing the observer's gaze. It outlines the training process by which the neophyte volunteer is transformed into a competent international observer as well as the paradoxes of fieldwork, particularly the difficulty that a foreigner's eye has in describing what it sees. In El Salvador, the standardization of the observation method and the imperative of neutrality thus led the IO to depoliticize and exclude from its study one of the election's main issues: the electoral behavior of the maras (the transnational criminal gangs of young people responsible for the high rate of violent death in El Salvador), on which there is still no data.

The Tensions of Affirmative Action in Post-Apartheid South Africa: An Analysis of Labor Court Jurisprudence Since 1998, the South African government has established radical measures intended, not just to fight discrimination, but also to rectify the inequalities produced by the Apartheid regime. At the forefront of these measures is the Employment Equity Act (EEA), which was adopted in 1998. One might expect this law to strongly protect the beneficiaries of affirmative action, and courts to rarely rule in favor of whites when they sued for unjust racial discrimination. Yet it turns out that, in the majority of lawsuits in which a judge finds there has been unjust discrimination, it is on behalf of white plaintiffs. On the basis of this paradox, this article examines the nature of the arguments exchanged in labor courts, arguments that supply the basis for the judge's distinction between just and unjust racial discrimination. These lawsuits cast new light on the victim of post-Apartheid discrimination, a figure whose contours no longer neatly coincide with a black-white line of division.