 around a new book, arguing Islam after the revival of Arab politics. Just a few housekeeping items. Nathan will be here afterwards signing copies of the book, which will be on sale outside. And also, I'm told that this is being live streamed. So beware, just something to know. OK, so I'm going to just introduce the two people up here with me. And then I'll ask each of them to offer some opening remarks. I may throw out a few questions. But then we really, I think, thought this would be most interesting if we could turn it into a discussion. So we'll open it up to the group. So Nathan Brown, for those of you who are here, he doesn't really need an introduction. We all have, I think, been following his work for some time. I know I have. He's a non-resident senior fellow in the Middle East program here at Carnegie. He's also a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He's written numerous highly acclaimed books on Arab politics. I was first introduced to Nathan's work as a master's student. Many years ago, his work on Palestinian politics and constitutionalism in the Arab world. In 2013, Nathan was named a Guggenheim Fellow. Prior to that, he had been a Carnegie scholar at the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In 2009 to 2010, he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. And in addition to his academic work, Nathan has served on the Middle East and North Africa Advisory Committee for Human Rights Watch and the Board of Trustees at the American University in Cairo. He has been an advisor for the committee drafting the Palestinian Constitution. He's worked with USAID, the UN Development Program, and several NGOs. I suspect one of his more challenging assignments was actually more recently, from 2013 to 2015, he was president of the Middle East Studies Association. This is the academic association for scholars who are studying the region. To my right, Amir Hamzawi is a senior fellow in the Middle East and also the Democracy and Rule of Law programs here at Carnegie. He studied political science and developmental studies in Cairo, The Hague, and in Berlin. He was previously a senior associate in the Middle East program at Carnegie between 2005 and 2009. And then later served as research director for the Carnegie's Middle East Center in Beirut. He's a former member of the People's Assembly in Egypt after being elected in the first parliamentary elections there after the January 25, 2011 revolution. And he's a former member of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights. OK, so let's get started. Nathan, I'll leave it to you to tell us a little bit about the questions that you addressed in the book and give us a hint of some of your answers. And then we'll take it from there. OK, all right. Thank you very much. Sarah, first let me start by thanking Sarah, who's, I'm not quite sure, not an old friend, not a new friend. I've known her since she was working on her dissertation, probably about five years or so ago. But I'm particularly indebted to her because she stepped in on almost literally a moment's notice in order to chair the session. And actually does some of her own work on some topics related to the books about religion and politics in the Arab world, focusing more on North Africa. But I commend her work to your attention. And I'd also like to thank Amra Hamzawi, who is an old friend, and known him for a long time. And he is so dependable that he decided to show up today, I think, dressed in a way that Nathan usually dresses in order to make me feel comfortable. And then was shocked when he saw me in a suit. Didn't have time to change, but that's a real friend. You can count on me. So I thought what I would do is just start with a few remarks about the book. This is perhaps best aimed at those people who don't intend to buy it, but want some quick summary. If you want to know the full details, you can buy it and read the full book. It was a fun book to research. The topic wasn't necessarily always cherry. And in fact, sometimes it was the opposite. But it sprang from, I mean, an awful lot of academic books are very specific, highly focused research projects, which have an identifiable beginning, research questions. You sort of wrap it up. And this is a little bit different. This is a book that, in a sense, was kind of in the back of my mind and occasionally in the front of my mind, really for the last 10 or 15 years or so. And it stemmed from what sort of prompted it was just what I thought was a sea change in the way that people talked about politics in the Arab world. Or really, the sea change was that they were talking about it. And they were talking about it in all different kind of form. When I first started working on the Arab world in the early 1980s, this was a place where if there were political discussions taking place, I wasn't invited to them. And the quickest way sometimes to end a conversation was to introduce a political theme. And it wasn't just in personal conversation. You picked up a newspaper. You watched the television and so on. And there would be very, very kind of state news. When I did research, for instance, I did research on legal issues in the 1960s, so I'd pick up some old newspapers. And again, what you would find would be a fairly faithful official record of what was done and fairly faithful accountings of official ideology and parroting of those ideological statements by people sort of farther down in the state apparatus or the party apparatus, depending on the place. But you wouldn't really find political debate. Then there was no real place where if there was political debate going on where there was much of a record of it. And of course, that's totally different today. The change is internationally visible since 2011, but I think it goes back farther than that, at least through the 1990s or so. When you really, and that's in the book, when I talk about the revival of Arab politics, that's what I'm talking about. Of various publics that are increasingly engaged or increasingly became engaged. And found various channels in which to have political discussions. And political discussions about all kinds of topics, but the ones that I was most interested in, the ones that I thought I probably had the sort of training best to understand in the probe. And sometimes the most sensitive and fascinating was what were those involving religion, the relationship between Islamic law and public policy between the role of Islam or religion in general and public life and so on. So those are the debates I kind of followed. And what the book tries to do is really two things. It's just sort of map those debates. How do they take place? How do you make a religious argument? Who makes the argument? How do you, when you say something in this form, who are you talking to? And the second is, does it matter? Does it have any effect? Is there any trace of a relationship between the sorts of arguments that people are having in public policy outcomes? And I look at three areas specifically, personal status law, educational curricula and constitution writing. And again, those are areas which are often topics of very hot public debates, but they're also areas where I have done research in the past. And so I thought I would be more comfortable because of sort of probing those areas. In regard to the first, I think I've already sort of prefaced the first question, kind of what debates take place and how do they take place? I've sort of prefaced it. I mean, in many ways, the most interesting thing is that they do take place and then they are so wisely. But what I uncovered, especially was how polarized they are. And again, this isn't that much of a surprise if you look at the last two years, but the phenomenon is remarkable. I think, for instance, one of the things that I think the multiplication of different form, you've got social media, you've got older traditional media, broadcasting media, print media, personal conversation and so on. And one of the things that the existence of these various fora have the effect of doing is, and I apologize for getting abstract for a second, but I'll get concreteness in a moment, is it detaches argument from authority. And what I mean by that, now I've got a little bit more concrete. When you make an argument, generally you're making it to people who are, if you're religious authority, people who accept your authority. You're making it to your followers. And you're making it to people who are, in a sense, inclined to listen to you. And what these various fora have the effect of doing is allowing your adversaries to take that and essentially ridicule it. Did you hear what this Salafi Sheikh just said? It's the most ridiculous thing in the world. And so instead of getting this kind of reasoned argument in which you have a religious authority presenting it to an interested or specialized audience or group of followers, you have a set of overlapping spheres which greatly, I think, aggravates, amplifies the polarization that takes place. People are aware of what each other is saying and for the most part, they don't like it. The second question that I deal with that is there any effect of these on public policy outcomes and the short answer is no. The longer answer would be, well once in a while in very specific circumstances. And essentially what happens is you have this very, very lively debate, but you have a set of political mechanisms in the Arab world that aren't really well designed to translate public discussion into policy outcomes. That's most obviously the case. Informal democratic mechanisms, the weakness of political parties, the way the elections are carried out in the region, but also I think a state apparatus that for the most part is designed to make policy within itself and not necessarily reflect. Any kinds of public input. There are exceptions and I talk about some of the exceptions in the book, but I think I would conclude by just saying the two phenomena that I'm talking about are not unrelated. In essence, if you have very lively public debate, but a political system that is close to hearing those voices, it is not at all surprising that you have, I would say polarization and increasingly irresponsible public arguments because if there's no connection between what you say and any kind of policy outcome, there's no necessity to build coalitions. There's no necessity to try and craft an argument that is appealing to those people who would not normally agree with you in order to build some kind of a political coalition that would produce a different kind of outcome, of course you're going to have polarization. In other words, because the political mechanisms are badly broken, the kinds of problematic political debates that we see in the Arab world over religious issues are, I think, going to continue to spin their wheels in a polarized and unproductive fashion. Okay, on that uplifting note, I'll ask Amar to offer a bit of a response and then we'll take it from there. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to join Nathan and you to discuss Nathan's new book. I can only recommend getting the book and go buying it and reading it. Nathan and I enjoyed very much reading it and so it's not really a response but a couple of remarks to basically give you more of a chance to elaborate on some of the great points you were just making and you make in such an intellectually intriguing manner in the book. My first point is on changes, which, as you've rightly mentioned, have been happening in the Arab world in different Arab societies with regard to the plurality of actors that have come to address religion as it pertains to education, as it pertains to personal status laws or laws as it pertains to constitutional writing. And so my first remark is, and you're very right in describing it, authorities were used to having specialized communities paying attention to what they're saying. So if you look at Egypt, for example, official religious institutions used to have a secured crowd listening to religious opinions coming out of the other institution or coming out of fatwa institutions and this is no longer the case. So my, and you do that in the book. First question I have is whether you can elaborate a bit on what happens to these actors when they start facing a different environment in which an other, for example, would be issuing a fatwa, a religious opinion, or they would be issuing a religious opinion that would be ridiculed on the very same day or would face resistance, contestation, and from within different religious discourses. And even if we look away from religious institutions and look at actors which are based in their platforms and their ideological visions on religion, Salafi groups, for example, the Muslim brothers and different affiliated groups across the region, this has been changing as well. They used to be the opposition, those actors in charge of the opposition discourse, opposing the official dogma coming out of religious institutions. But even their role as the only and sole opposition or oppositional voice is no longer the case. This has been contested as well. It's interesting when I look at Egypt, look at Salafi, for example, the changes that they have been going through between 2011 and today. Two years, 2011, 2012, for their arguments, for their appeal to a specific understanding of religions they were relevant politically, intellectually, and everyone was struggling with their arguments. When you look at Egypt today, and of course there are different factors, different changes which have been happening, but in fact no one is paying attention anymore to what Salafis are saying. So we used to pay attention for two years, now it's no longer the case. So the first question is, so what happens when actors, when it becomes more of a plural setting, when it becomes more of a diverse environment? What happens to actors in the way they use religion? Does it change? Do they adjust? Do they become more relative in what they say? What kind of tweaks, what kind of adjustments happen to the way they use religion? In communicating about education, persons that are slow, or low, and with regard to the constitution and the constitution writing processes. A second remark I have is with regard to politics. So revival of Arab politics, and you're right. I mean, this is not a story which needs to be narrated going back to 2011. It's a longer phenomenon. It has been happening maybe since the 1990s, in some cases since the 1980s, depends on where we exactly look. But if we just take a couple of countries, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, at different points in time, prior to 2011, politics and political debates were becoming more vibrant, more relevant, and even in a pan-Arab sense. I mean, the phenomenon of Al-Jazeera, which was emerging back in the 1990s, and similar phenomenon that did emerge at least a decade prior to 2011. Now the question is with regard to what's happening now, and this is beyond the scope of the book. So are we seeing, for example, a demise of Arab politics? The revival which was emerging in the 1990s, and the last year is being cracked down upon by old new autocrats, by closure of public space that's happening in many places. In fact, I take the same countries that I was just referring to, Algeria, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan, in different manners, the comparison between 2016 and maybe mid-1990s is not preferable from a 2016 perspective. So politics would seem to be more interesting two decades ago are becoming, again, from a public perspective, less interesting. So if we are looking at a process of de-engagement of segments of the public becoming once again less interested in politics. So what happens to arguing religion in a political sphere that is no longer up and rising, but is, in fact, being cracked down upon and being closed off by governments? Does it shift the use of religion back to specialized communities? Does it grant these authorities and the institutions the lost authority they used to have before? And a third remark on basically the Asians. And I'm referring to your very interesting chapters in the book in which you detail on institution writing processes and debates and debates on education, on curricula-related questions, on personal status laws. So the question I have in mind is how does religion, or reference to religion, change in times of political transition? So you refer to polarization as one point. So you have a plurality of actors debating, not re-debating, putting forward. I'm not sure that we can describe that as a debate or not because when you say polarization is one of the key factors, one of the key factors which I've been looking at, this undermines the very nature of what a debate is all about. So actors pushing forward ideas, narratives, visions of the relevance and significance of religion for these issues and not debating in times of political transition. So does the debate come back in when political transition is no longer at stake? Is it that when you look at Egypt for example between 2011 to 2013 and you compare it to Egypt between 2013 and 2016, is it more of a real debate that's happening now between specialized groups because the polarization is behind us, because the political transition is no longer happening or does the polarization continue and live beyond political changes and whether political changes are occurring or not? Finally, so what I really, among different things, what I really liked about the way you look at religion and how it's used, that you've always managed to relate the discourse, the narratives, ideas circulating to Asians and you relate Asians to each other and you try to see for example how in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood and the discourse between 2011 to 2013 has been evolving in response to different Salafi arguments on the constitutional right. And so Article II in the Egyptian Constitution, principle of Sharia as a major of prime source of legislation and then keying in in the Constitution of 2012, the article number 219, trying to detail that for the first time. And so it's the way you look at actors and how they relate to each other and how they develop the use of religion in the three spheres, you all find it's very interesting. My question is on that note and this is the final point I'm making is imagining or going back to times in which these actors were not responding to each other, so where the Muslim Brotherhood were not responding to Salafi views. Do you see a trajectory of more moderate, rational debating, less polarized debating is a polarization related to the fact that they were pushed in a political environment in which they had to compete in which they had to contest for votes or contest for power and lifting them out of this environment puts them once again in a position where they can argue in a more rational in a less polarized manner. So I'm interested in looking at the environment, the political environment and what it does to actors and the ways they use religion. Great, okay, so let me see if I can resume just... I picked up four questions, I think, which were great and I think Nathan, if you want to just address any part of that and then we can open it up. The first question had to do with this business of the plurality of actors and whether you've seen any... What is the effect of that plurality of this company of voices now on the message, on the discourse itself? The second question had to do with this business of comparing previous periods that Amir referred to with what we're seeing now is that you end the book actually on a... You're trying to be optimistic, I quote, in a sense, right. But how convinced are you of your own optimism there? So are we seeing a demise of Arab politics? The third point I think Amir raised had to do with this relationship. Each of your questions, I think, by the way, is worthy of the doctoral dissertations themselves, but this question of a... Nathan can take a little in five minutes. Yeah, question of a relationship between the discourse on religion and periods of political transition. So does the polarization outlast that transition? That's how I understood Amir's question. And then finally, whether it's possible to anticipate that we might actually see less polarization once some of these actors are actually no longer in positions of political power, political authority. So of course, yours to tackle. However many of that you'd like to. If I tackle all four, do I get four PhDs? Get a bonus, yeah. Okay, thanks. They're great questions. One of them I thought of before, and the other three I had not. But I'll try to give a just talk to all four of them, not necessarily give complete doctoral-length responses. On the first one, sort of how is it, you know, you've got older religious establishments that are now all of a sudden in this operating in this cacophonous environment. So how do they react? How does it affect them? I would guess the first thing is they know they have a problem. The official establishments know they have a problem. But they're also, they're big bureaucracies, right? And so they react in a very kind of lumbering manner. And I don't think that's all that surprising. So they go back to the fact that they control things like often what are said in sermons in Moss that they control the educational curricula and so on. Individuals within those establishments however, can react very, very differently. And again, my knowledge here is greatest for Egypt but I've seen the same kind of phenomenon in other places where you have sort of people who are ensconced in fairly responsible positions, suddenly deciding that they want an individual public voice. So how do you do this? If what you're used to is basically saying because I've got all these us hearty degrees you have to believe me, just suddenly being on a television talk show or basically trying to do this with a Facebook page or tweets. And one of the, you do it a couple of ways. And I don't mean to be flippant here. One way you do it is how you dress, right? So you go there on a television talk show and you're wearing your us hearty garb and you're basically communicating, I know what I'm talking about. Or, and I came across another instance of this, where a last heart designated a young spokesman and they sent him on with a polo shirt and it had been obvious that he comes straight from the gym by the size of his biceps. And the message here was kind of like, this isn't an old us hearty. This is a young, attractive youth who's still giving the us hearty message. And it was aimed at a youthful audience. So they're very self-conscious about things like this, even about things like when they smile and when they don't, when they go on TV. So for a lot of them, I think for the traditionalist this is kind of the sort of transition they don't want to make. You don't make an argument by looking, looking at your wardrobe in your closet. But that's how a lot of them as individuals operate. And they also operate in a sense by invoking this authority in an indirect manner. So, and El Azhar is the best at this, basically implying that there are all kinds of answers out there. There's one Egyptian answer. There's one Azhar answer. There's one right answer, okay? And they do this subtly. You could not make the argument directly that says anything that Azhar says is absolutely right and final for all Muslims. You can't say that, but you can imply it. And that's essentially kind of what they do, kind of trot out these kind of symbols. How effective it is, I think it depends on the speaker and on the audience and sometimes on the country. The second question was about essentially, this is about the revival of Arab politics and it kind of stops in 2015 or so, are we now witnessing the death? And the answer is I don't think so, but we're certainly are seeing the constriction of some of the public spaces where these arguments occur. But not all of them. I think the transnational aspects still exist. Even the Catholic in the press, if you take a look at the way that, again, if you were to compare even a dull, stodgy newspaper like El Aham in 2016 with El Aham in 1966, you see a different newspaper. They're aware that there are different voices out there that they have to be arguing against, in a sense. So I think even in that respect, as some of these spaces closes, you still do have some signs of that debate, sometimes even debates between state institutions in which there are some openings for people to make other kinds of arguments. And then you've got all sorts of ways in which people who are not interested in participating in the official East-Engine ones have alternatives that didn't exist before. They only existed before in sort of Samas.Form. And they're now much more accessible. And that brings me, I think, to the third question which had to do with polarization, I may be combining the third and the fourth, I'm not sure. But do you see a decline in polarization? And I think it depends on where. And this is the question I just answered. The second question was what I thought about before. This is what I haven't thought about before. And so I'm gonna give two answers. And they're answered based on two different societies, Egypt and Palestine. In Egypt, I actually think it's gotten much, much worse. And the reason it's gotten much, much worse doesn't have to do with technology. It has to do with August 2013. There was a traumatic event in Egyptian society, and all the violence associated with it, that has just driven a wedge. And either this was an incredibly formative event that taught some Egyptians, and I'm coming up with figures, 20% of the population, that their opponents would stop at nothing, including mass murder, versus those who said, essentially, the society was on the verge of chaos and was rescued by those events, okay? That is the kind of deep trauma that I think will, Egypt will be dealing with for the next generation. And it's difficult to talk across that divide. I've even seen personal conversations between Egyptians where it suddenly turned awkward when it was clear that there were people on opposite sides of the divide, and they just stopped talking about it. Now, so that's Egypt polarization worse. Palestine almost the exact opposite. I think a sense that the old ideologies, the old Palestinian nationalism, Islamist ideology, and so on, the organizations, Hamas and Fatah, are still there. Their answers to Palestine's problems are just gone. And so people basically talk as if the ideologies are relevant, so you have much broader public discussion. Again, this is extremely impressionistic, but I guess that's a way of, I guess my short answer would be depends on where. And I'm sorry, the fourth question, right? I kept three in my mind. You responded to it. Oh, I did, okay, all right. All right, without even knowing it, all right. No, it was, yeah, I mean, it was once again. I mean, what happens when polarization rises or when it declines? And where does it happen? So depending on the physical environment, we responded. So your argument, Nathan, then, is that the arrow is going from political structures or political mechanisms toward polarization. If you don't have proper mechanisms for channeling some of these debates, you are more likely to see polarization, is that? Yes, as a political scientist, I'm required to make a causal argument. And if there is a causal argument, that is a causal argument. It's weakly made. I mean, I think it's one factor among men. I don't think it's the only one, but I think it is something that actually takes a problem that was sort of existing and probably makes it worse, yeah. Okay, great. So let's open it up. If people have questions or comments, you can just identify yourself and I'll jump in, but yes, please. Oh, actually, you know what? Sorry, we're just gonna give you a microphone. Thank you. I'm Alex Norris from the National Down for Democracy. I'm curious, sort of, you're talking about this, obviously, the causes of this awakening of Arab politics happening before the Arab Spring. I'm curious, if you see one or multiple causal mechanisms for it, I know that's not the causal argument you're necessarily required to make, but and do you see this as connected to sort of what some have seen as the degrading of authority in political argument throughout the world, including in the West. So essentially a question, if I understand you on the reasons for the, to the extent there was a revival, even if it predates the Arab Spring, but what were some of the reasons for this? And how Arab is that story? If I can put it in a paragraph here. The first part is complicated, but a little bit easier to answer. And I think it has to do with a few things. I mean, number one, it's simply the multiplication of media available. So some of this is almost a technological argument. I think a lot of it has to do with essentially the exhaustion of the unideological phase in Arab politics, regimes stop presenting themselves to their populations in ideological terms. And part of it is a little bit structural, the very harsh authoritarianism of the 1950s and 1960s and some societies softened a little bit. And that obviously there's considerable variation from countries. So in a sense, there were regimes that began to learn to deal with political opinions by kind of manipulating the political scene rather than shutting it down. So those would be, I think, the kinds of things that kind of gradually developed. How Arab is a story is that that's a fantastic question. And it's one that I've actually kind of thought about because it's not the only place where I see the political base to be based. But I don't know how to respond to it because I haven't really kind of examined it in comparative terms. I just note the commonality. Hi, Fadaladir, my research focuses on Tunisia. I wanted to ask you a question about, I guess you're talking about religion. Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding your argument, but religion in the sense of, it already seems quite policy-oriented. I mean, it's not theological debates that you're discussing. You're talking about it's education, it's constitution making, and these are not about the nature of God or heaven. So I guess, why has it sort of moved to this realm in the first place? Or why are we talking about it in this sense? I mean, what's the importance of religion within this policy discourse? But then when you, I guess more broadly, when you're looking at religious debate as it relates to policy, I guess also I'd ask what do you mean by policy? I mean, is there formal policy or informal policy? I mean, even if things don't happen on a legal basis, when you're looking at policing or decisions by the judiciary or even in bureaucracies in terms of hiring, there seems to be a reference to religious debate and that seems to have an effect on society. Could you respond to that? Yeah, what I would say is that if you're looking for theological debates about the nature of God, no, there's no direct link to policy. But again, an awful lot of the debates are not about the nature of God, but about the nature of God's instructions to us as human beings. And that gets immediately into policy issues. So personal status law in most countries is expected to be carried out in accordance with God's instructions. God told, God gave us instructions on how to react to each other as husbands and wives and children and parents and so on. And therefore, law should reflect that. The law on the books should reflect that. That is essentially how the legal systems of almost all states in the Arab world are built. Again, with education, almost all states have some kind of mandatory religious curriculum. And what that means is when it comes to teaching, what religion is and what religion isn't, it's the job of the Ministry of Education. It becomes a public policy issue, just as much as how you teach history, social studies, or whether you introduce algebra at this grade or that grade. Those are public policy issues. And finally, constitution writing. That's actually fairly interesting because when a new process began, it was not seen as one that really had much to do with religion. The process began in the Arab world in the late 19th century. An awful lot of it was about fiscal accountability. It was about rulers who were spend-thrift and basically kind of running the state budget as a personal household budget and basically coming up with a set of mechanisms and institutions and oversight that would have some kind of fiscal accountability. That was a lot of the impetus behind it. But I think over the course of the 20th century, it became expected that constitutions would not just be about bookkeeping, but they would be about the nature of public and political life. And once that transition occurred, it occurred basic over half a century in the 20th century. It became expected that somehow basic political values and be reflected in the constitution is not just about how it is that a bill becomes a law. A constitution is about who we are as a people. And so it's debates about religion which were sort of at the margin of constitutional debates became at the center of constitutional debates. And in fact, if you take a look at recent constitutional processes in Tunisian, Egypt, and Iraq, awful lot of the debate focuses on the religious clauses. They're not kept off to the side anymore as they used to be. I'm sorry, and the second part of the question, the one I said I couldn't answer, I think. Oh, informal, yeah. I didn't trace it. Except judiciary, obviously, because once it comes into the constitution, it comes into our personal status law in a sense if the judiciary becomes an actor that determines which interpretation of, I mean, they're dealing with legislative texts, but they're dealing with legislative texts that in a sense have some kind of religious foundation or are informed by religious values. So the judiciary does become an actor in religious debates. But the others, I wouldn't be surprised if there is some kind of relationship, informally, if not formally, but I didn't trace it, and I'm not sure I would know how to trace it, so. But Amir, can you do it? Yeah, no, no, I mean, just one quick reflection on the judiciary and religion in Egypt. I mean, one of the striking features for different reasons, I've been reading many court proceedings rulings in the last three years, between 2013 and 2016. And Nathan, correct me if I'm wrong. So the court proceedings, rulings which I've been reading in relation to politicians, members of the Muslim Brotherhood put on different trials or voices of dissent put on different trials. I noticed a degree of reference to religion, which I was not aware of before in writing the court rulings. And my impression has been that because here we do have a group or members affiliated to a group that claims a reference to religion, that the way you address them, the way you push them out of the community is by using religion as well. So you will read court rulings in relation to MBE's put on trial, refailing in details to how they got it completely wrong, how they interpreted religion wrong, how they did not give the one right answer, the one Egyptian answer, the one answer sanctioned by Al-Azhar. And I'm not sure that was the case prior to the last three years or not because I believe courts were never in a similar position where they have on trial former officials, even if they were officials for a very limited period of time. So in a way, I guess religion's being more used in courts, the way they write the rulings. A second quick reflection is that it's used as well in relation to policing and law enforcement. Once again, flipping the argument against whatever happened before by saying, well, those who claim to be running at right in the name of religion did it completely wrong and here is the right way to do it. So I guess it's relevant because Egypt did have these two years or less than two years where a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood was at the top of the government in a way so they keep reflecting and going backwards and trying to create some distinctions in the way they did it and the right way to do it. Following up on this last point, you both talked about the right, this is the correct Egyptian interpretation, the Al-Azhar interpretation and so on, but whose interpretation is it at this point? Because I'm very struck a few years ago when the Morsi was in power. Everybody was worrying, a lot of Egyptians were worrying and a lot of people abroad about the fact that Islam was dominating, was coming to dominate the Egyptian state. Now, my impression is, and I have looked at this some in Egypt and some in other countries of the Maghreb, Islam is still very much at the center as you are saying Amrit is in the court to ruling and so on, but Islam is defined by the state, is defined by the political authority and not by the religious authority. And I'm wondering whether you find that this is the case, that there is really a shifting of the balance of power there in terms of who defined Islam, whether it's the political authority or the religious authority. There is one example that is very graphic and it was maybe a couple of years ago 18 months ago when Sisi went to Al-Azhar and essentially addressed the scholar saying you are not giving us the right interpretation, which very much implied I have the right, the state has the right interpretation. And he keeps doing it. He just did it again. Every couple of months. I'll give you my reaction but I'd also be interested in hearing Amrit, maybe actually Sarah as well is look at sort of similar questions in North Africa. So if we want to move the discussion away from Egypt we might have to call on her. But Egypt, I would say essentially that is, it is right that the state now has a dominant voice, right? It has edged out the brotherhood, it has edged out the Salafis, but at this point I'm going to give an answer that I think a lot of people would disagree with me on, maybe even Amr, an old friend that he is, that you have to distinguish here between the state and the regime, okay? And that's some of the contests that you see going on. So as CeCe shows up and addresses senior al-Azhar people as we need a renewal of religious discourse. And of course he's the president and so they listen very politely, but they're clearly upset. And they're upset for a couple reasons. Number one, you have a general telling a sheikh about trying to teach him how religion, it's like this gets things, this gets things reversed. And al-Azhar tried to find a way I think to push back the top leadership of al-Azhar. And you now have an interesting contest among some state religious institutions. You have a minister of religious affairs who is I think trying to use this struggle between al-Azhar and the presidency muted struggle, but still a struggle in order to sort of come in and say, don't worry, we'll do things the right way. But you still have an al-Azhar that although it is part of the state apparatus and ultimately is on board with the new regime, still has some sense of its institutional dignity and autonomy and is therefore a little bit resistant to taking presidential commands. Exactly how this will play itself out over the long run, I don't know. But my own impression, this is just an impression, is right now you have of the state institutions that can tell the president, they don't tell the president no, but they try to deflect the president's words and try to drag their heels. I mean, the security services are obviously a very, very important players, but al-Azhar and parts of the judiciary are actually able to do this still to some degree more than other state institutions. So that's why I say it's like, so al-Azhar, al-Azhar Islam is one that the regime is essentially comfortable with what we'd like to reshape. The al-Azhar leadership is fundamentally in the last analysis, it's comfortable with the new regime. They certainly prefer it to the brotherhood presidency, but there is more tension and more ability of al-Azhar at the top leadership to articulate an autonomous voice than immediately meets the eye, which is why CTC keeps on showing up and doing this. That would be my answer. But again, my guess is that would be a minority view. Well, I wouldn't disagree. I would add them two quick points. One, Mason is right, ultimately al-Azhar, especially the leadership of the institution, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Taid, so has been keen on articulating autonomous views. So they were called upon to renew interpretation, interpretations of religion or the way we understand religion, and they in fact kept silent for almost a year. And in fact, in a way that the president needed to go back to the issue and say, well, but we haven't heard from al-Azhar. So in a way keeping silent or steering away from including the institution in the debate was a passive resistance, if you wish. Yes, they are keen on articulating an autonomous view and they use the space. I mean, you do a great job in the book outlining the different public spaces in which actors shape arguments about religion. Al-Azhar has a secured space. Al-Azhar has its tools. It does not need media. It does not need al-Ahram newspaper. It does not need any space sanctioned by the political power. It can address the public using its own spaces. But once it's pressed to move beyond that, to integrate itself and include its arguments in a wider public debate, it gets confronted with the state authority. If Al-Azhar needs to get a scholar, a young scholar to appear on a TV show, this needs to be accepted, wanted, permitted by the state, whoever in the state. It can be a security apparatus, it can be an intelligent community or whatever. So in a way, once Al-Azhar needs to move beyond its own well-defined space into a wider public space, it confronts political authority. And this is not an easy process. The second point, I guess Al-Azhar, throughout the last years, and Nathan is right in referring to the fact that they were less comfortable with the Muslim Brotherhood and power as opposed to the current regime. But overall, in the last years, Al-Azhar has, I believe, has been waking up to the new reality of, well, here is a fundamental contestation of your voice, of the voice of the institution coming from so many addresses and wanting to respond to all of them in a way has been resulting in a distraction of the message of Al-Azhar. So when I try to see where does Al-Azhar stand on an issue like the renewal of religion, the only takeaway I have is the institution has been silent, hasn't been doing much, maybe resisting it, but hasn't offered a different way, saying, well, we do not need to renew it. It has been renewed systematically by others throughout the last centuries, which used to be in other positions in the 1990s, for example, facing oppositional voices from the Muslim Brotherhood or scholars attached and affiliated with them, Al-Azhar, for example, so Al-Azhar would say, well, but we have been renewing it throughout the last decade. That does not come. So in a way, it's in a battle. It's a true contestation happening and other response to it. I was just to make an observation that it's interesting to hear about the Egyptian case. I mean, what I find interesting is, as you go from one country to the next, I think part of the answer to your question has to do with the degree of institutionalization, if you will, of religious authority. So a country like Egypt, where Al-Azhar is, I mean, is a serious institution, robust, been around for a while, contrasted with a country like Tunisia, where they're struggling with the fact that they don't have much in the way of formal institutions of religious education, that, yes, could be in contestation with the state, but also, in a way, I imagine it can sometimes be convenient for a regime like in Egypt to have a religious institution to look to for approval of certain policies in Tunisia. You don't have that. You keep moving west, you get to a country like Morocco, which has its own sort of arrangement. And but even there, you've seen the state trying to really take more and more control over religious interpretation. So the dynamic, it's interesting to just compare from one country to the next, but there were a few other hands there, yes. They've gone away from the Winter Worlds and so on. I wonder if you could update us a bit on what are the issues, now that the Muslim Brotherhood has been kicked out of Palatine, what are the issues being debated within what I hear is there's a tremendous turmoil inside the Muslim Brotherhood, whether to stay in politics, go back to the rebel, go through a revolutionary approach. What are the issues today, activists, if you want to, are debating? The ones I'm aware of are essentially political issues and they have to do with attitudes towards the state, attitude towards violence, attitudes towards sort of sort of strategic questions to some of them, tactical questions, and much less who would consider these specific public policy questions. This is not a time to debate school curriculums, this is a time to decide kind of the fundamental nature of kind of the quandary in front of us and how we respond to this repressive power. That would be, those at least are the debates that I'm aware of, for the more closely. No, I haven't been following for the last three years. So my impression is that it's away from debating religious issues or theological issues and even wider societal issues. We do not have the same wide scope with the Muslim Brotherhood, they'd have prior to 2011 where they were, for example, debating issues pertaining to freedom of expression and religious limits on freedom of expression. I mean, debates which they did have in the 1990s and beyond the 1990s on literary productions, novels by Nageeb Mahfouz and others and how to position a movement's position vis-à-vis freedom of expression. That is gone. That is not part of what they are looking at. So the turmoil is a political turmoil and it's, again, is a background of a movement that has been pushed out of politics, basically outlawed, criminalized in Egypt and exists partially in Egypt and to a great extent outside of Egypt. So the political turmoil is related to movement inside and outside of the country, how to manage the exile segment as opposed to those who are still on the ground operating and these are tactical questions and strategic questions when it comes to violence, how to shape a clear movement position on violence and secondly, politically, vis-à-vis a regime, the eternal question of reconciliation yes or no. And so you have week in, week out, new statements coming from somewhere in the movement signaling reconciliation or a yes to reconciliation or a no to reconciliation. But this is no longer the movement which had, in fact, some to my mind which was able to generate interesting intellectual debates back in the 1990s and the last decade by 2011 against the background of its political role of freedom of expression, human rights, in general, status of women and so on. This is no longer part of what we're looking at. Kumar, I have retired now. Is there a secular component to, any secular component in Arab politics right now and a secular component being there? Depends on what you mean by secular. If you mean something basic explicitly on the argument that religious values or private values that have no role in public life will find individuals who will make that kind of argument, more who will make it privately than who will make it publicly. There's all kinds of ways in which you would have, I think, approaches that are effectively secular that simply don't look to religion in making public policy questions. But those who would say that it has no role, that it should not play a role, that is a secular and ideological sense instead of just a practical sense, they're extremely legal. Thank you very much, Benjamin, to a retired diplomat. You contrasted the situation in Egypt to that in Palestine. And as I understood it, you said there was a very broad debate there and that this provided some dangers. Is that, as I understood it, is this because there's no sort of outcome that's seen as positive and are you mostly talking about the Palestinians to what extent could it apply to the Israeli sector? With the Palestinians, I would say, it's not dangerous if people are talking to each other, right? And it's not dangerous if people are talking to each other across kind of a former ideological divide. What's dangerous is that it is hooked up to absolutely no kind of viable program action activity or anything like that. So I think you see kind of a decay of Palestinian political life, not of discussion, but of political life that essentially makes, I think, Palestinians politically incapable right now. There's, they have no program, no organizations, no structures. Is something similar happening in Israel? I know less well, but I would say no. You've got some very strong and highly motivated and organized political forces within Israel, some of which are getting what they want. Are you mostly addressing government sector in the public area? It seems that there are significant important movements. I'm talking about the BDS movement, which is increasing, providing some sense of openness. And on the government side, there is the turn to international law, which is consistently adhered to, will provide some chance of success. And of course, the Israelis are already concerned about this so they can't have a sense that the situation is gonna remain static over the long term and even over the shorter term, given the unpredictability of how the US might approach that conflict in the coming years. So those are two different, very, very different movements. And I think you were right to identify the first as non-governmentalist, second as governmental. In a sense, the second comes from the Palestinian authority, the PLO leadership, and it is one that is legal and international. And I think maybe 10 years ago, it actually did get some attention and has some traction within Palestinian society. Right now, I think very few Palestinians follow or place many hopes in it. So it's much more of a political strategy or diplomatic strategy by an aging and isolated elite that doesn't know what else to do. Or that's how it's perceived by, I think, most Palestinians and I think accurately. BDS is a little bit different because this is a movement that, again, if you went back five or 10 years ago, most Palestinians had not heard of it or if you did ask them what they had heard of it, they would say, well, that's great for the international, people in Europe and the US who support us to do, but right now, I mean, this is not a strategy for us. I think it's beginning to get some resonance, but it's not really supported by organized political movements within Palestinian society, most of which don't quite know what to do about it. Hamas is not pushing BDS. They're not against it, but they're not part of their agenda. For Fata, it's a little bit of a quandary exactly what to do because they're supposed to be dedicated to a diplomatic process and the people who sort of, there's sort of an ad hoc committee that kind of pushes BDS and Fata has a very weak voice in that. So that's a little bit more of a grassroots movement. And to me, it's the fact that BDS has moved, I mean, it's not at the center of Palestinian political discussions, but it's moved from the far edge a little bit closer to the center, is a mark in a sense of how much it is that the organized political movements, especially Fata and Hamas, have kind of lost their grip on Palestinian political discussions, especially among the younger generation. One more, and then I might add one to close us off, but Michelle. Hi, Michelle Dunn from Carnegie. Nathan and Amra, I wanted to ask you to take the discussion a little bit more into the realm of what the effect is on the societies in the region and voices on religious or religious political issues that come from outside the establishment. It seems to me, if we were having this discussion 10 or 15 years ago, we would have been talking about people like Amar Khaled or Yusuf Kharedawi, who had big followings in places like Egypt and the Gulf and Saudi Arabia on media, on traditional broadcast media and then later on the Salafis with all the, and it seemed as though people like that were having a big effect on societies and how they viewed religious issues and even religious legal issues like Sharia and how it should be applied. How do you see that now? It seems as though, I haven't studied this, but it seems as though those voices have been kind of drowned out or silenced or whatever, driven to the margins by everything that's happened politically in the region over the last, you know, since 2011. I think they're still central, but not necessarily to immediate political discussions. I mean, they're enormously popular. And, you know, I said some of the research was fun. One of the fun parts was watching programs where you had what I call sort of the Fatwa Minnet thing. You know, you have a caller come in and I've got this problem with my husband or my kid won't do this or this sort of thing and what, you know, and they're asking people who have either religious qualifications, that is to say they're giving kind of a really, something amounting to a Fatwa, a Sharia based answer or they're sort of more kind of more, I would say more morally based. It would be more like a morality. Doesn't say I'm a religious scholar, but he still says I can draw on the general teachings of the religion to give you some helpful guidance. I think these are still enormously influential voices or actually influential, I don't know if anybody follows what they heard, but they're certainly very popular voices and they're still very, very active. Some of them did get, I mean, like Yusuf Karatell, he got very involved in political questions and again, in a sense his following, I think, was greatly shaped by the polarization that took place in Egypt after 2011. Some of them try to avoid politics precisely for that reason, to avoid any kind of alienation of some of their followers. But I think, again, there's still very, very much of presence in public life in addressing all kinds of pressing questions, but the connection with the immediate political questions I think has may have declined, at least that's my impression. You may watch more television than I do, so. No, but again, I agree. My only point to add is that even this group too has become more of a diverse group. So it's interesting to see Michelle what has been happening to preachers with religious credentials. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi representing a generation followed by different generations and the way arguments have been changing in response to political events or not in response to political events with some immediate political significance or away from politics completely. But even the group of Amr Khalid and those who have been following Amr Khalid in Egypt and elsewhere, I mean, just to name some, Moaz Masoud, and it's interesting to see how this group has become more diverse as well. The overall interesting point and Nathan addresses a few in part one in the book, I'm bringing you to the book once again, and I mean, using Charles Hirschkind. So it's interesting to see what happens, in fact, to credentials. I mean, does it still matter to speak in the name of religion that you know what you're speaking about? Amr Khalid is not a, he never claimed to be someone who was trained religiously, but it has moved beyond the Amr Khalid. I mean, to see people claiming to use religion to give moral statements, to put forward answers to questions on how to raise your children, how to manage yourself in the private sphere without any religious credentials at all. And this is one of the issues where the other continues to struggle again. It sees a sphere which has become more diverse, but even credentials no longer matter. There's a phenomenon by the name of Isnam el-Bahiri, someone who has emerged in the last two years, and of course was all due rejection to what happened to him because he was imprisoned and was just pardoned by the president, and of course I'm happy that he's released. But when you look at the details of discussion centered around him, these are discussions where religion, or religious credentials, who was trained to do or to say what, no longer play their own. So it's interesting to see what happens to specialists. Is it the end of a specialist? Is it a new era where a specialist compete with non-specialists? It's interesting to see. The guy with the polo shirt that I mentioned was brought on specifically to refute Isnam el-Bahiri. Right, exactly. So it's like, we've got our big life up to you also. Right, right. Yeah, we have none, so I mean, so I'm happy we're away. But in a sense it sounds like this is a subset of the broader question about authority, right? What does authority mean now? What does religious authority mean? So I'll just close the session with one remark. This has been fascinating. I recall that in my own travels back and forth to Tunisia over the last few years, Fadil maybe can confirm this, but many people liked to tell me, no, no, no, we've resolved the question of religion and state. We got through the constitution, that's all been settled. Nathan, I think your book compellingly shows that first of all, that debate has actually been going on very vibrantly in a way that maybe we haven't noticed always for a while. I suspect strongly it's not a settled debate and it's gonna continue. So thank you very much for coming and don't forget there are books outside and you can get your very own autographed copy. Thank you all.