While Israelis were absorbing the unexpected results of their election yesterday, their neighbors in Jordan were producing an electoral surprise of their own.
The Jordanian election was for a 150-seat parliament that, for the first time, will have a say in appointing a prime minister and Cabinet — ending the king’s exclusive hold on the executive branch of government. At least 10 percent of the seats were reserved for women, but early results indicate they may win twice as many.
But the big surprise is that the election marks a major setback for the Muslim Brotherhood, which has won a major share of power in many “Arab Spring” countries, notably Tunisia and Egypt.
Operating as Islamic Action Front, the Brotherhood’s Jordanian branch boycotted the voting after King Abdullah II refused its demands for major reductions in his powers before elections were held. Instead, he promised to give the parliament authority to amend the constitution.
By excluding itself from the new political process, the Jordanian Brotherhood set itself against the spectrum of political opinion in the kingdom — including several more moderate Islamist groups and scores of politicians with strong local roots.
By doing so, the Brotherhood in Jordan has repeated the mistake of its Kuwaiti counterpart, which boycotted last year’s parliamentary elections there.
Across the Middle East, the Brotherhood owes much of its recent successes in securing a share of power to two factors. The first is the success of its Turkish branch, the Justice and Development Party in winning power through elections and leading Turkey’s economic transformation.
The second factor is the informal alliance the Brotherhood has concluded with the Obama administration in Washington. That alliance was crucial in persuading the military elites, notably in Tunisia and Egypt, to jettison the incumbent despots and, later, let the Brotherhood win a share of power through elections.
In exchange, the Arab sections of the Brotherhood, again following the Turkish example, have promised to tone down and, in some cases, set aside their traditional anti-American discourse.
Nevertheless, even in Turkey, the Brotherhood suffers from a split personality.
On the one hand, it sees itself as a revolutionary force with a mission to lead Muslim-majority countries into radical transformation leading to the revival of the caliphate. On the other, the Brotherhood is tempted by “re-Islamicization” through incremental reforms, something that requires winning power through elections.
Initially, last year’s elections in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya boosted the reformist trend within the Brotherhood. But the downside soon emerged: In a dozen competitive elections, the Brotherhood managed to seduce no more than 10 percent to 30 percent of the electorate.
These elections exposed as bogus the Brotherhood’s claim that countries where up to 90 percent are Muslims would necessarily vote for Islamist parties.
Worse still, opinion polls show that in countries where the Brotherhood has won a share of power through elections it has little chance of doing so again in the foreseeable future. In Egypt’s coming parliamentary elections, the Brotherhood is on track to win no more than 10 percent of the votes. Even Hamas, the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, is unlikely to win a majority in elections expected to be held later this year.
Islamist opponents of the reformist option claim that the Brotherhood has had to offer too many concessions to win a toehold in government. It has abandoned its key Islamist slogans and put its “re-Islamicization” program on the backburner.
The failure of the Brotherhood’s revolutionary power grab in both Kuwait and Jordan will only intensify the power struggle that has been raging in the broader Islamist camp since the start of the “Arab Spring.”
The experience of the last two years has shown that Islamists can, and in many cases must, have a place in the political spectrum of the countries concerned. But it has also shown that, as a minority belief, Islamism still harbors hopes of imposing a dictatorship in the name of religion.