Qu’est-ce qu’un parti fondé sur une base religieuse ? Interprétations concurrentes d’une catégorie juridique dans le contexte politique égyptien

Abstract

In Egypt, the ‘political parties with a religious basis’ are explicitly prohibited by law since 1977. However, this ban has had a negligible impact on political life, because administrative jurisprudence has since long diminished its scope, by reducing the question of the religious basis of a party to that of the confession of its members. Nevertheless, the secular opponents of the Islamists have repeatedly claimed, since the constitutionalization of this ban in January 2014, that it should be interpreted more strictly. This article first recalls how the Islamist and secular camps emerged during the political and constitutional struggles of the 2011–2013 era, before examining the competing interpretations of the notion of ‘religious party’, such as made by the administrative jurisprudence, by supporters of the ban on Islamist parties, and by the Islamists themselves.

Law and political Islam’s transformations: Egyptian Islamists and the notions of a civil state and a religious party

“…Among the secularists, the term ‘civil state’ is often used to avoid the expression ‘secular state’, which is perceived as anti-religious by large sections of Egyptian society (Hamzawi, 2011; Katbeh, 2014). On the opposite side, the secular interpretation of what a ‘religious party’ is lacks in clarity (Steuer, 2019). By contrast, the Islamists had to develop a sophisticated interpretation of both notions to support or oppose their inclusion in constitutional texts.…”

“…Just like the notion of a 'civil state', the signifier 'religious party' is an object of consensus, with no Egyptian party describing itself as being religious. In the same way, it is a field of tension, with the political actors struggling to impose their own definition on the term, in particular in front of the courts, which can decide on whether to ban a political actor (Steuer, 2019). Yet, even in the post-2014 context, no party has ever been forbidden on this basis until now.…”

“…The FJP was banned in 2014, but on the basis of its links with the Muslim Brotherhood, which was deemed as a terrorist organization. Other Islamist parties (BDP, the Asāla Party, the Watan Party, the Wasat Party) have been de facto prevented from acting by state repression, but have never been banned, despite the many attempts to get them banned coming from secular organizations (Steuer, 2019). This highlights the symbolic importance of this designation, not only in terms of repression, but also in terms of delegitimizing.…”

“…No Egyptian political party would call itself a religious party. Indeed, the administrative jurisprudence has for a long time narrowed the meaning of this notion, which never prevented the creation of Islamist political parties advocating the application of sharī‘a 2 or describing themselves as ‘civil parties with a religious frame of references’ 3 (Steuer, 2019).…”

“…The article will focus on the relations of the two main Egyptian Islamist political parties of the time -the Muslim Brothers' Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and the Salafi Call's al-Nūr Party -with two politico-legal notions which have been at the center of the constitutional debates since 2011, and that appear in the current Egyptian constitution, as amended in 2019: the 'civil state' (Blouët and Steuer, 2015;Lavie, 2017Lavie, , 2021 and the 'religious party' (Steuer, 2019). These relations have been twofold: the Islamists have played a role in the drafting of the constitutions (Blouët, 2016;Jermanová, 2019;Moisseron and Bouras, 2015), and they had to conform to legal requirements to be officially recognized as political parties and participate in the elections (Bouras, 2017).…”