The 2011 Egyptian Revolution and Islamists in Egypt and Malaysia
The opposition Islamist PAS (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, or Pan Malaysian Islamic Party) is one of the oldest political parties in Malaysia. Inspired by Egypt’s Ikhwan al-Muslimin (Muslim Brotherhood [MB]), PAS is also influenced by occurrences in the Middle East; following the 1979 Iranian Rev...
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| Formato: | article |
| Lenguaje: | EN |
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International Institute of Islamic Thought
2013
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| Acceso en línea: | https://doaj.org/article/289ccf70f5a5412e8f0895e1e2e2394a |
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| Sumario: | The opposition Islamist PAS (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, or Pan
Malaysian Islamic Party) is one of the oldest political parties in
Malaysia. Inspired by Egypt’s Ikhwan al-Muslimin (Muslim
Brotherhood [MB]), PAS is also influenced by occurrences in the
Middle East; following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, its leaders
revamped their organizational structure to entrust key decisions
to religious scholars. The ramifications of the 2011 Egyptian revolution,
arguably one of the most significant Middle Eastern political
events in recent times, thus deserves a closer look.
This short article attempts to look at this revolution’s possible impact
on Islamists in Malaysia. I argue that Malaysia had already
undergone its own version of a revolution in the 1998 reformasi
(reformation) due to the shared characteristics between the two
events: both (1) shared the same premise of alleged political injustice;
(2) provided opportunities for Islamists to influence the
political discourse, with the difference that in Egypt there was a
political vacuum; and (3) utilized the Internet heavily to rally the
masses. However, due to Malaysia’s freer democratic and electoral
processes, political changes there will not be as abrupt as in
Egypt. Furthermore, both Egypt’s revolution and Malaysia’s reformasi
have hardly ended; the former is a tumultuous ongoing
process of battling for the legitimacy of rule by appealing to the
masses, while the latter is an ongoing process of appealing to voters
in order to come to rule.
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