Previous issues of Arab Insight focused on a range of deep-reaching social and cultural transformations taking place in the Arab world, such as women's economic and social roles, the changing nature of religious leaders and institutions, and the impact of expanding Internet access on democratization and youth values. Our interest in these sweeping trends is due to two main factors.
Firstly, this type of transformation tends to be rapid compared to the relatively slow pace of political change in the Arab world, whether this is regarding transitions of power, political party evolution or the undemocratic nature of political interaction inside Arab regimes. The very vitality of the sociocultural trends only widens the gap between the citizens caught up in them and the more static regimes, a dynamic which could conceivably force the latter to open up and change the state-society relationship.
The second factor is related to the fact that many American and other Western analyses tend to overlook the sociocultural domain in favor of a focus on politics, specifically democratization. Though the importance of the political sphere is undeniable, a deeper understanding of the Arab world, including political change or the lack thereof, requires a grasp of the changing sociocultural situation.
Without then diminishing the importance of the various sociocultural changes which the Arab world is undergoing, the revisionism within some of the jihadist movements is arguably the most striking and potentially significant transformation currently underway. One must take into consideration the size and reach of these groups, as well as the extensiveness of the revisions, which do not merely renounce violence but also question and reinterpret the theoretical basis they had used to justify violence or their "jihad" over the past decades. Last but not least, these revisions could have a long-term impact on the future of the relationship between the state and these jihadist groups, or the groups and the religious movements with a political agenda (such as the Muslim Brotherhood) or on the Salafist current in general, which is the most active of the violent Islamist movements. Thus, these revisions will remain one of the foremost transformations in the Arab and Islamic world in upcoming years, and need to be thoroughly analyzed for a deeper and fuller understanding of their dimensions and repercussions.
The revisions gained traction after Sayyed Imam al-Sharif, a former leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, published "Rationalizing Jihad in Egypt and the World" in which he tackled the theoretical justifications for Islamist violence, as discussed in an article in Arab Insight's fourth issue. The publication of this document was deemed threatening enough to al-Qaeda that Ayman al-Zawahiri responded with his book Exoneration, attacking Sayyed Imam's revisions, prompting the latter to pen "Denudation of the Exoneration." Thus, a furious debate has been raging within jihadist Salafism, with one side represented by a local jihadist movement (Islamic Jihad, and before it the al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, both in Egypt), whereas the other side is the leading international jihadist movement, al-Qaeda.
As has been said before, this debate created questions about the revision's impact on the Salafist current with its various factions, whether peaceful or violent, local or international. The future of the revision process itself also looks less certain, especially after in "Denudation of the Exoneration" Sayyed Imam al-Sharif slipped from his previous well-thought-out theoretical and religious arguments into ad hominem attacks, declining the opportunity to further break down the theoretical justification of jihad.
Thus we are faced with a pair of important new questions regarding the Islamist phenomenon in the Arab and Islamic world. Will the revisions which a group of Islamist movements are undertaking, and the transition of these movements from violent local jihadist Salafism to nonviolent Islamism, create fissures in the violent jihadist Salafist organizations, whether local or international? And will the peaceful Islamist movements take the necessary steps to be in harmony with the principles and values of democracy and liberalism, with their political, social and cultural dimensions?
Arab Insight tries to offer some answers to these two questions by dedicating five articles to the question as the focus point of this edition. Four of these give specific answers on the revisions' expected impact on the Salafist jihadist current, while the other article looks at whether one of the largest and most important moderate Islamist movements, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, could become a liberal force.
In addition to this important topic, this edition of Arab Insight also addresses a range of important social phenomena, including challenges to higher education in the Arab world and the Arab presence on Facebook. Finally, it would have also been difficult to publish this edition without airing an Arab perspective on the causes and consequences on the recent Israeli assault on Gaza.