Order From Ashes

Shia Power: What’s an Islamist?

On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Sajad Jiyad plumbs the complex evolution of Shia Islamism during two decades at the center of Iraqi power.

 

This episode of Order From Ashes is the first in “Shia Power,” a four-part series about the transformation of Shia politics in Iraq, and what Iraq’s experience teaches us about the role of religion in politics everywhere. 

 

A new edited volume from Century International, Shia Power Comes of Age: The Transformation of Islamist Politics in Iraq, 2003–2023, maps the radical transformation of Shia Islamist politics in Iraq over the last two decades. Contributors include Taif AlKhudary, Ali Al-Mawlawi, Marsin Alshamary, Thanassis Cambanis, Maria Fantappie, Fanar Haddad, Sajad Jiyad, Renad Mansour, and Ben Robin-D’Cruz.

 

Sajad and Thanassi, directors of Century International’s Shia Politics project, reflect on the lessons of Iraq’s Shia Islamists for politicians, policymakers, and researchers.

 

In episode 1 of “Shia Power,” Sajad Jiyad and host Thanassis Cambanis chart the powerful role of religion and the Shia clergy in the creation of a new Iraqi order after Saddam Hussein. In episode 2, Marsin Alshammary draws on her fieldwork in the seminaries of Najaf to argue that clerical authority has not diminished, despite setbacks over the last twenty years. In episode 3, Taif Alkhudary chronicles the revolutionary efforts of the Tishreen protest movement to establish an alternative to religious politics. In episode 4, the final in this series, Ali Al-Mawlawi connects some of today’s sectarian rhetoric to Iraq’s long history of anti-Shia prejudice.

 

Read:

Book: Shia Power Comes of Age

Project: Shia Politics

 

Participants:

• Sajad Jiyad, fellow, Century International
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Facing Iraq’s Climate Catastrophe

In a miserable twist for the people who live there, Iraq has become a front-line test lab for the extreme effects of climate change. A combination of forces, accelerated by bad human decisions, has dramatically degraded Iraq’s environment. And Iraq’s experience is a harbinger of what’s coming to the rest of the world. 

On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Century International fellow Zeinab Shuker explores the unhappy mix of factors that has made Iraq so inhospitable.

Zeinab is leading “Living the Climate Emergency: Lessons from Iraq,” a new Century International project exploring how policymakers and researchers can draw on the case of Iraq and its neighbors to translate into action the growing consensus that the climate crisis is already here. 

Century’s Climate Emergency Project will connect field researchers, policymakers, and a wider audience through roundtables, public events, podcasts, and reports. Future research in this project will place today’s crisis in a historical context; map the contours and human impact of climate change in Iraq and its neighborhood; and finally, drawing on the lessons of the extreme case in Iraq, make projections about the future and propose solutions. 

Read: 

• “The Deep Roots of Iraq’s Climate Crisis,” Century International report by , Zeinab Shuker
• “Iraq Is Overheating. How Can It Mitigate the Effects of Climate Change?,” Century International commentary by Zeinab Shuker

Explore:

Project homepage, “Living the Climate Emergency: Lessons from Iraq”

Participants:

• Zeinab Shuker, fellow, Century International
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Lebanon’s Botched Economic Rescue

Lebanon’s ruling elites have sabotaged talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which offered the last hope for reforms that could save the country’s economy and improve life for millions of suffering people. 

On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, researchers Sami Zoughaib, from The Policy Institute in Lebanon, and Sam Heller, from Century International, reveal how Lebanon’s elites have misled the public on the reality of the country’s dire situation.

Without some course change, Zoughaib and Heller argue, Lebanon will not have the IMF program it needs to halt its economic collapse. But public pressure could still force elites to act responsibly—or at least hold those elites accountable.

The two researchers discuss the findings in their new report, a joint production of Century International and The Policy Institute in Lebanon. It is part of “Networks of Change: Reviving Governance and Citizenship in the Middle East,” a Century International project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations.

Read:

“The Shadow Plan: How Lebanese Elites Are Sabotaging Their Country’s IMF Lifeline,” by Sami Zoughaib and Sam Heller.

Participants:

• Sami Zoughaib, economist and research manager at The Policy Initiative in Lebanon
• Sam Heller, fellow, Century International
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Power and Power in Lebanon

The scramble for electricity has produced new interest groups that will shape the evolution of Lebanon’s decaying power sector, and the country’s future. Lebanese people endure erratic and expensive electricity supplies—not because of some staggering technical challenge but because of corrupt, often criminal, monopolies that control the energy sector.

On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Century International fellow Zachary Cuyler talks about the competing interest groups that reap the benefits of Lebanon’s failed electricity system. 

Zack delves deeper into the dysfunction in Lebanon’s electricity sector in his recent Century International commentary, “Lebanon’s Grid Has Collapsed. What Comes Next?”

Participants:

• Zack Cuyler, fellow, Century International
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

A Tale of Two Border Towns

The effort to secure Iraq’s borders after the defeat of ISIS has created other, new sources of instability, as conflict supply chains adapt to new circumstances.

A close look at two border towns in Iraq’s western desert illustrates the law of unintended consequences. The Iraqi government, bordering countries, and the international community moved to more tightly control official border crossings in order to defeat ISIS. As a result, however, militias and smugglers have moved a great deal of commerce, legal and illicit, to other crossing points. In the meantime, people along once-prosperous trade routes suffer privation and violence, driving new conflicts.

Researchers Renad Mansour and Hayder Al-Shakeri tell the tale of trade, smuggling, and conflict across Iraq’s borders. The trajectory of trade route towns Rutba and Qaim help explain the mechanics of conflict supply chains and the unintended consequences of efforts to secure parts of the border without thinking of the spinoff effects.

Participants:

• Haydar Al-Shakeri, research associate, MENA Program, Chatham House
• Renad Mansour, director, Iraq Initiative, Chatham House
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Broken Bonds: Quitting the Brotherhood

Members have fled the Muslim Brotherhood in droves since its ouster from power in Egypt in 2013, frustrated that the organization can’t take care of them, or provide meaning for their lives. Will the Brotherhood learn the lessons of its failures before its next, inevitable, comeback?

In this final episode of Broken Bonds, Amr ElAfifi explores the Brotherhood’s crisis of membership and the implications for policy. 

Some have left the Brotherhood because they’ve lost trust in the leadership; others, because they say the organization “is not being brotherhood enough.” The Brotherhood’s fractious trajectory after the Rabaa massacre of 2013 makes clear that there is no single Brotherhood path during a period of unprecedented violent repression. 

The Brotherhood’s scattered grassroots have followed divergent paths, some embracing militancy, some withdrawing to the private sphere, and others abandoning faith altogether. 

The Brotherhood tried to claim the mantle of Islamist politics, but found itself beset by contradictions and crises. “Islamism,” like the Brotherhood, is not a clearly defined or monolithic movement. 

Broken Bonds is a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The first episode charted Abdelrahman Ayyash’s personal coming of age in a Brotherhood milieu. In the second episode, Ayyash, Noha Khaled, and Amr ElAfifi mapped how the crises of identity, legitimacy, and membership simultaneously explain the organization’s weaknesses, and staying power. In the third episode, Khaled dissected the identity crisis that has defined the Brotherhood since its establishment. In the fourth episode, Ayyash sketched the leadership vacuum and power struggles that have hobbled the Brotherhood since 2013.

Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.

The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Participants:

• Amr ElAfifi, PhD candidate at Syracuse University; research manager, Freedom Initiative
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Broken Bonds: Leaders without Legitimacy

The Muslim Brotherhood is a hierarchical organization suffering a debilitating leadership vacuum. Now, the organization has to reinvent itself while most of its top cadres are in exile, dead, or in jail.

Years after being forced to become a transnational organization because of its leadership’s expulsion from Egypt, the Brotherhood is now at an even more complex crossroads. Its old strategies for managing its relationship with the Egyptian state, and maintaining a quasi-clandestine presence in Egypt, are no longer relevant. 

Abdelrahman Ayyash explains the power struggles and inchoate efforts to create a coherent strategy among the Brotherhood’s fragmented leadership after the 2013 coup and subsequent crackdown. The Brotherhood has been riven by power struggles and fundamental debates over resources, its international orientation, and the use of violence. This leadership crisis has hobbled the Brotherhood.

This is the fourth episode of Broken Bonds, a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The first episode charted Abdelrahman Ayyash’s personal coming of age in a Brotherhood milieu. In the second episode, Ayyash, Noha Khaled, and Amr ElAfifi mapped how the crises of identity, legitimacy, and membership simultaneously explain the organization’s weaknesses and its staying power. In the third episode, Khaled dissected the identity crisis that has defined the Brotherhood since its establishment. The fifth and final episode of Broken Bonds explores the crisis of membership and the implications for policy.

Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.

The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Participants:

• Abdelrahman Ayyash, fellow, Century International 
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Broken Bonds: No Identity

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is suffering from an identity crisis, made worse by ongoing, violent state repression. Nearly a century since its founding, the Brotherhood hasn’t reconciled its social and political aims.

Noha Khaled plumbs the first of three crises besetting the Brotherhood: its internal identity conflict over what kind of organization it aspires to be. 

Throughout its history, the Brotherhood has struggled to accommodate its mission as a religious and social service network, alongside its ambitions for political power. That ambivalence, or contradiction, forms the cornerstone of the Brotherhood’s ongoing triple crisis.

This is the third episode of Broken Bonds, a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The first episode charted Abdelrahman Ayyash’s personal coming of age in a Brotherhood milieu. In the second episode, Ayyash, Khaled, and Amr ElAfifi mapped how the crises of identity, legitimacy, and membership simultaneously explain the organization’s weaknesses and its staying power. The remaining episodes of Broken Bonds go deeper into the crises of legitimacy and membership, and the implications for policy.

Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.

The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Participants:

• Noha Khaled, writer and researcher
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Broken Bonds: Existential Crises

The Muslim Brotherhood tries to project an image of grassroots power and disciplined leadership. A trio of researchers takes a different view, describing a once-formidable organization that is under strain and out of touch.

The Brotherhood, they argue, is experiencing multiple crises—of identity, legitimacy, and membership—which accelerated after Egypt’s military coup in July 2013. 

Based on unprecedented access to Brotherhood leaders, rank-and-file members, and internal dissenters, the three researchers—Abdelrahman Ayyash, Amr ElAfifi, and Noha Khaled—take a new granular view of the organization. 

The Brotherhood and its detractors alike have misunderstood it as a mass ideological organization, missing its evolution into an elite membership organization disconnected from its constituents. 

This is the second episode of Broken Bonds, a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The first episode charted Ayyash’s personal coming of age in a Brotherhood milieu. Remaining episodes of Broken Bonds go deeper into each of the three crises facing the Brotherhood and the implications for policy.

Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.

The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Participants:

• Abdelrahman Ayyash, fellow, Century International 
• Amr ElAfifi, PhD candidate at Syracuse University; research manager, Freedom Initiative
• Noha Khaled, writer and researcher
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International

Broken Bonds: My Life as a Muslim Brother

What’s it like to come of age in a Muslim Brotherhood family in Egypt’s Nile Delta? Abdelrahman Ayyash recounts his childhood, political awakening, and disenchantment.

Ayyash recounts his early history cocooned in a Brotherhood community that took care of its members’ schooling, moral training, social life, and career counseling. And he recalls with stark frankness his shock, as a young blogger and political activist, at the political rigidity of the movement in which he’d been raised.

Ayyash’s personal journey from a young movement standout to dissident, critical researcher opens Broken Bonds, a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The remaining episodes of Broken Bonds explore the triple crises facing the Brotherhood, the organization’s likely resurgence, and how observers and policymakers mischaracterize the Brotherhood and its significance.

Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.

The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Participants:

• Abdelrahman Ayyash, fellow, Century International 
• Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International