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T H E EV E RY DAY L I F E OF T H E STAT E I N A SI A A N D NORT H A F R IC A

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 1 3 . U n i v e r s i t y o f W a s h i n g t o n P r e s s .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

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Revelation and Redemption

Colonial Precedents for the Politics of Islam in India and Malaysia

iZA huSSin

In April 2001, a case came before the High Court of Malaysia on a matter of constitutional and Islamic law. The plaintiff, a Malaysian citizen who was born a Muslim, presented her case as such: She had converted to Christian- ity and been baptized in a church. She applied to the National Registration Department to have this change of religion displayed on her identity card, stating also that she wished to marry a Christian (which would not have been legally possible had her identity card stated her religion as “Islam”).1 The National Registration Department accepted the request for a change of name (to Lina Joy) but denied the request for a change of religious status, arguing that the plaintiff needed the Syariah Court to certify her conver- sion out of Islam.

The judge dismissed Lina Joy’s case on the grounds that she was still considered to be Muslim and that the case was therefore within the exclu- sive jurisdiction of the Syariah Courts. However, in the judgment, the judge also commented on the multiple constitutional issues raised by the case, one of them the question of whether Lina Joy could actually convert out of Islam. Here, her ethnic identity—Malay—made that impossible, in the view of the judge: “A person as long as he/she is a Malay and by defini-

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tion under art. 160 cl. (2) is a Malay, the said person cannot renounce his/ her religion at all. A Malay under art. 160(2) remains in the Islamic faith until his or her dying days.”2

The case of Lina Joy has raised controversy on the role of the state in religious affairs and the rights of citizens to religious choice. It throws light on the strands of constitutional, religious, and administrative law woven through time that bind ethnicity, religion, citizenship, and family. In this matter, Lina Joy did not go to the Islamic courts because she did not iden- tify as Muslim; in denying jurisdiction, the secular court argued that Lina Joy was indeed Muslim and in fact could not convert out of Islam because she was also Malay; Muslim authorities, instead of taking the interpreta- tion of the High Court, raised the issue of apostasy, indicating that the possibility of leaving Islam was indeed an issue and had grave ramifica- tions under Islamic law.3 By the time of her appeal in 2005, the judges in that case, too, were using the term apostasy to refer to conversion out of Islam and discussing matters of Islamic law in their opinion.

A productive way of studying these complex dynamics is to take seri- ously Joel S. Migdal’s (2001a) charge to study matters of revelation and redemption in the politics of religion and to engage with Robert Cover’s (1983) work on nomos and narrative in law.4 Both scholars conceive of poli- tics and power as two-edged processes in which both state and society play critical roles and where disputes serve multiple ends. Matters of revela- tion and redemption, the power of image and its susceptibility to prob- lems in practice, certainly occupied both colonial and local elites, even as the meanings of these concepts and the manner of their achievement dif- fered. As Migdal (2001a) and Cover (1983) argue, however, matters of faith and law—of revelation, nomos—cannot be separated from the contexts and politics that give them meaning or from the people who change their directions and who benefit and suffer from their application in everyday life—redemption, narrative. These propositions can be used to illustrate how the colonial encounter in British India and Malaya relates to contem- porary struggles over Islamic law and state authority.

The basic argument is that law is made, unmade, and remade. Dur- ing the colonial period, local and colonial elites negotiated the scope, con- tent, and application of laws pertaining to Muslims and Islam, to their mutual benefit. In the process of making laws that defined Muslim life, religion, and relations with the state, these elites participated in a funda- mental remaking of Islamic law in the evolving state, centered on family,

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personal status, ethnic identity, and the “private” domain. The claims of religious law to stand apart from the law of the state have provided signifi- cant power to religious institutions and elites, even as state resources have become part of the repertoire of religion. At the heart of the politics of reli- gion lies a paradox: even as the institutional presence of religion wanes, its symbolic presence waxes. This paradox demands a scholarly response that not only takes religion seriously but draws deep connections between the institutions of religious authority and their effects on not only state insti- tutions but on the manner in which state authority was, and continues to be, shaped by its interactions with religious actors, ideas, and challenges.

In colonial India and Malaya, “the religious” and “the state” became more intertwined and mutually defining during the colonial encounter. The division of jurisdiction among local and colonial elites, the definition of key elements of state, society, and religion, and the formation of state institutions and elites were key processes in the making of “Islamic law” as well as of “the Muslim state.” The conditions of their making continue to have effects on contemporary Islamic law and Muslim identity. In these cases and others, the study of religion and politics is inseparable from the study of state formation and the building of elite power. As the Lina Joy case and colonial-era archives show, both Islamic law and rule of law are concepts in global circulation, with their own networks of actors, institu- tions, and resources. This cross-regional comparison allows the study of Islamic law as a transnational product, rather than as an Arab export, and as shaped by local political networks.

rEvElAtion: lAW iS AlWAyS bEing mAdE

In Islamic legal scholarship, the term Islamic law refers to both the Sharia (divine directives from the Qur’an and Sunna, authoritative traditions of prior Muslim communities) and to fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) (Hallaq 1997). Sharia as a word translates to “way” or “path” and refers to a much wider body of authoritative guidance on all areas of Muslim life, only a small portion of it “legal” in nature. Comparative legal scholarship tends to view “Islamic law” simply as the law, or part of the law, belonging to Muslim states. Islamic law is both a system of ideas and rules and a set of institutions and personnel: in this definition, the beliefs of the individual Muslim about the path God has dictated are mediated through the author- itative interpretations of religious and secular powers and acted upon

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through the structures of society and state, in conjunction with a range of other motivations, restrictions, individuals, and groups. Islamic law is not Sharia translated from Arabic into English, although its authority derives from the authority of the divine Sharia; Islamic law is not fiqh (jurispru- dence), although some of its content derives from the work of jurispru- dents working in the classical fiqh tradition. Islamic law is understood in this project to be a modern construction, inextricable from the state and its history and, therefore, inextricable from colonialism and the power of local elites. Islamic law, therefore, is critically a site of contest and a realm for the articulation of state-society relationships.

The making of Islamic law took place in three related and cyclical pro- cesses in India and Malaya: the division of jurisdiction among local and colonial elites, the definition of Islam and the state, and the making of the state itself, that is, its administration, its elites, and its claims on Muslim identity (Hussin 2008). In colonial India and Malaya, there was an insti- tutional marginalization of Islam and Islamic legal institutions, and at the same time Islam and Islamic law became central components of the power of both state and social actors. This paradox was constructed as an out- come of jurisdictional division among local and colonial elites. This divi- sion benefited some elites at the expense of others, bifurcated both Islamic and colonial state regimes, and continues to be maintained in many post- colonial states, whose Islamic legitimacy is buttressed by their application of “Sharia.”

rEdEmPtion: lAW iS AlWAyS bEing u nmAdE

It is precisely the competitive nature of the politics of religion, even within conditions where one party holds more power or authority than another, that makes Islamic law at one and the same time a force for preserving the status quo and for changing it. The contests between elites over Islamic law show this struggle over what is authoritative, and the results of these negotiations—often bloody, contradictory, and surprising—enter society in multiple ways and take on meanings and forms of their own.

The unmaking of law was a prerequisite for the making of law in the colonial period. In order to establish new hierarchies of elites in each local context, colonial and local elites negotiated treaties that dismantled old networks of obligation; these same local and colonial elites fought wars that redistributed resources and power, which removed old intractable

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elites and replaced them with new; and colonial agencies produced text- books, maps, and censuses to fix new facts, new borders, new populations, and identities. Trial records from this period mark the fault lines between the old order and the new, and new laws reflected the conflicts that arose almost immediately between local and colonial values and interests. The plurality of the colonial order reflected both the need to maintain the image of local sovereignty and the reality of strained imperial resources; it was imposed through violence and the threat of violence, and it was a plurality whose logic was imposed through British colonial ideas of law, justice, and the pragmatics of rule.

However, these changes were not simply imposed on a docile and pow- erless subject population: local elites often invited British colonial inter- vention in local disputes, and some elites benefited significantly from their negotiation with British colonial powers. While the traditional view of colonial law is that it was imposed by powerful imperial regimes on local colonial sites, this study argues that legal change in the colonial period afforded local elites new opportunities and resources for increasing their power and realizing their visions of society and state. Neither local nor colonial elites were unified in their aims, their values, or their resources, and so contests within local networks and within the British colonial proj- ect itself also led to subversions of law, even after it seemed that agreements had been made and policies reached.

The “jurispotence” of the concept of “justice” within British imperial politics, for example, led to tensions at all levels of the colonial project. A stated mission of the colonial government was to bring British methods of government and practices of civilization to native states under British pro- tection; however, maintaining ruler control over religion and custom was a pillar of the policy of indirect rule and seen as representing British imperial regard for rule of law. “The contradiction inherent in these aims, the one impossible of realization in terms of existing Malay institutions and the other dedicated to their preservation, led to a fundamental dichotomy in British policy seen at every turn in Malaya’s colonial history” (Roff 1967, 12).

ProCESS i: JuriSdiCtion

Jurisdiction asks the question, whose law is Islamic law?5 In the contem- porary Muslim world, jurisdiction has become perhaps the most critical issue in Islamic law and society, as both states and social actors battle over

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what the proper scope of Islamic law should be and in whose voice it may speak. The first legal moves made in the colonial state were meant to divide legitimate jurisdiction among colonial and local elites, initially through processes of treaty making. It is important to regard treaties dividing juris- diction among local and colonial elites as moments in wider processes that bifurcated public from private, law from custom, religion from the secu- lar, and the state from society, during the British colonial period. Treaty moments set into motion elaborate processes of social and legal division, reassigned political and economic resources, and set the stage for a new politics of Islamic law.

The processes by which Islamic law was transformed during the colo- nial period were not only multiple but also inseparable from struggles over justice, power, territory, and administration. Jurisdiction is (1) an action, (2) a resource, (3) a space, and (4) an organization; it relates to (1) justice, (2) power, (3) territory, and (4) administration. The transformation of Islamic law in India and Malaya during the British period involves all these orders of meaning. India in particular served as an important field for the articu- lation of British notions of legality, legitimacy, and administration.6

It is arguable that the British were invited into their position in Malaya by a disputant in the royal succession of the state of Perak, whose position the British bolstered through a treaty that also assured the presence of a British Resident in Perak, whose “advice must be asked and acted upon (in Perak) on all questions other than those relating to Malay religion and custom” (Parkinson 1960, 323-25). The Treaty of Pangkor (1874) reflected a negotiation about which actors in Malaya had jurisdiction in each area of law and under which terms British participation would be possible. Careful to establish their legitimacy as commercial and secular “advisors” to Malay and Muslim rulers, British officials in Malaya kept the arena of religion, custom, and traditional practice explicitly out of their scope of authority. In dividing territories of governance among themselves and the Malay rulers, however, religious and racial identity, not previously a major part of Malay elite legitimacy or discourse, became the center of the Malay elite domain and the key to their survival.

Broadly speaking, the state gained prominence in both public and pri- vate life during the colonial period. Further, during the British colonial period, local religious figures lost their authority, control, and administra- tion over Islamic law to state rulers, bolstered by the colonial state and its administrative hierarchies. Whereas before the colonial period, changes

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took place mainly at the local community level, during and after the colo- nial period, changes in Islamic law were most often aimed at the state or national level. This change in jurisdiction—a spatial change—also had important effects on the content and meaning of Islamic law, effacing the local character of Islamic legal practices and institutions and replacing them with a new, often more authoritarian and patriarchal, state-adminis- tered system. The scale of these changes was not in fact limited to what are now national boundaries: Indian experiments in Islamic law and colonial administration were carried into other colonial sites, including Malaya and Egypt.

While the general shift of jurisdiction from the local to the state level is key to understanding the radical change that occurred in Islamic law during the colonial period, even more crucial is which part of the state, which elites took hold of the reins of jurisdictional change. In British colo- nial India, the division of jurisdiction in India occurred first between the economic and civil domains of state and, in doing so, separated revenue extraction by the state (granted to the East India Company) from the power of different state elites to maintain order and deliver justice. How- ever, other divisions would soon occur, many of them in order to facilitate revenue collection and state administration: the division between indig- enous norms and English rules of law, between local elites who held legiti- mate state power and local elites who now had been excluded from state functions, between Hindus and Muslims.

The processes by which the division of jurisdiction in the early period took place allowed local elites to choose among various forums for dispute resolution and legality and therefore position themselves more favorably with regard to resources, institutions, and political networks. In India, for example, some local elites working in conjunction with the colonial state “were frequently able to appropriate considerable amounts of land under their political control and then have themselves recorded as the propri- etors under British legal authority” (Stokes 1978, 84). Whereas in India the colonial division of jurisdiction resulted in a transformation of “little kings to landlords” (Dirks 1986), the local dynamic of power, interests, and political context in Malaya resulted in a shift from chiefs to sultans.

There was a transfer of power, in many colonial situations, from one set of local elites to another, but each of these cases shows that there was also a shift in the identity of the elites themselves. The transfer (or appro- priation) of power, authority, territory, and administration—of jurisdic-

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tion—depended upon the dynamics of local elite competition, upon the new resources and opportunities provided by colonial intervention, and upon existing institutional and economic configurations, which included enduring and powerful Islamic institutions and networks.

ProCESS ii: dEfinition

As with Lina Joy, during the colonial period, ambiguities in legal and social meanings of Islam were at times brought to the courts, whose involvement could spark off further disputing and legislation over religion, even when the religious was strictly out of their purview. In India and Malaya, treaties between colonial and local elites divided jurisdiction and drew the lines along which new battles would be fought. One set of battles occurred in trials held in colonial courts, trials that were instrumental in defining the terms and limits of state and religion. They dealt directly with the ques- tions before them: inheritance, treason, corruption, marriage. At the same time, they were part of complex struggles within state and society over these issues and over the authoritative means of resolving conflicts. Court trials were at one and the same time a testament to the power of that state and its institutions and evidence of the lines of struggle that continued to crisscross through state authority and control. And because each moment of struggle sparked off new contests and opportunities, trials were often followed by legislation, protest, violence, and changes in administrative and political strategy.

In India, the division of jurisdiction among local and colonial elites soon required the definition of key terms within these jurisdictions. The Hastings Plan of 1772, undertaken to reform the law in Bengal and there- fore improve revenue extraction and administration for the British, also undertook to define the scope and target of religious law for both Hindus and Muslims and set into motion a new system for the governance of mat- ters of religion and culture. East India Company courts would administer Hindu laws for Hindus and Muslim law for Muslims, based upon Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic texts. Muslim law was defined in the Hastings Plan as “indigenous norms” to be derived from the Qur’an “in all suits regard- ing inheritance, marriage, caste, and other religious usages or institutions” (Cohn 1985, 289).7

In Malaya, the divisions of power laid down by the Pangkor Treaty incited a state of war between local elites and British forces. After the Perak

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War (1875), both sides carried with them into negotiations the memory and the threat of violence, leading a British official to comment, “By the action which his [the Resident’s] death made necessary, the State of Perak gained in twelve months what ten years of ‘advice’ could hardly have accom- plished” (Swettenham 1907, 246). By October 1876, almost all the major Malay figures in Perak, including the sultan, had been replaced, paving the way for new relationships between elites in the state. The colonial project managed to achieve radical transformations in law and society, including in the area of religion and culture, because it either made accommoda- tions with local elites or removed them. Transformations in local elite networks—in which elites continued to exercise power, in what resources these elites had at their disposal, in what areas these elites could legally or legitimately function—had important effects on Islamic law and Muslim identity.

Trials of local elites during the early colonial encounter show that Islam and Islamic law were rarely mentioned as stakes in the conflict (Hussin 2008).8 Instead, both local and British actors dwelled upon local power networks and the proper hierarchy of the new state; on state ceremonial and ritual observances; on taxation, labor, land, and military matters; and on the use of force to achieve those aims. In both India and Malaya, these trials show that local elites considered the British to have overstepped their bounds, to have strayed deep into domains local elites considered their own. They also show an insistence on the part of the British on justice, albeit justice specially defined.

The resolution of these trials cleared the way for a new kind of Muslim elite to exert influence and new techniques of colonial governance. Even though they may not have addressed Islamic law directly, these trials, through their intervention into elite power and hierarchies, helped rear- range the political landscape in such a way as to facilitate radical changes in Muslim life and identity. In their aftermath, local elites who could not navigate the new waters of colonial negotiation—in matters of religion and culture and beyond them—were no longer able to dictate Islamic law or influence Muslim society. Elites (and others in the new state) also quickly learned to take advantage of the opportunities provided by multiple lay- ers of legality and forums of adjudication to gain a foothold in the state administration, acquire property or a favorable decision in a specific case, or define the parameters and content of law—Islamic, customary, and oth- erwise—according to their worldview and interests.

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The trials were arenas of struggle, within which colonial and local elites, and local subjects, grappled with the new realities of state and society. However, they were arenas controlled in large part through the resources of the colonial state, peopled with its officials, run by its logic, and in the language of colonial authority. As such, these trials were also mechanisms of control in that they helped define the colonized state and its subjects in much the same way as other technologies of rule introduced by colonial- ism—maps, census, and scholarship. Through these mechanisms, local elites and colonial officials attempted to understand, define, and control the developing state and its subjects. The presence of British officers in local governments, and the requirements of colonial government, gave rise to a proliferation of materials aimed at fixing definitions of Islam, Islamic law, Muslim society, and local practice for both local and colonial elites: an increased reliance on written texts and formal codes of law; sociological, historical, and theological studies; manuals of judging; and translations of the Qur’an and local myths. Institutions of Islamic law and Muslim society were transformed, courts and legislation began to redefine the relation- ship between Muslims and the state, and Muslims themselves continued to develop new ways of appealing to, opposing, and reforming the state.

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, technologies such as printing, railways, and mass maritime transport made exchanges among geographically distant places far more common. It is clear that both local and colonial actors in all the sites of this study were fully aware of the world beyond their borders and borrowed freely from the experiences and strategies of others for their own actions. Both local and colonial elites in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were products of increasingly interconnected political, economic, cultural, and social worlds: the sultans of Johor were well known in London, as were the nawabs of India; the Ottoman sultans were important references for Malay and Indian elites; British colonial officers often began their careers in Ireland or India and then were sent to Malaya, Egypt, or Africa (Tignor 1963). More and more pilgrims went on the hajj to Mecca and there experienced Islam as it was practiced in the “center” of the Muslim world, but they also met Muslims from other parts of the world with whom ideas about colonialism, moder- nity, and the future were debated (Peters 1995).

Muslim societies all over the world were rethinking authority, legiti- macy, state, and society during the same period as European imperial expansion, and the forces of modernization and colonization further com-

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pelled Muslim articulations of the best relationship between religion, poli- tics, and society. Muslim education was changing alongside approaches to law and realities of state: the textually bound approach to religion that was ascendant in the legal systems of India and Malaya was paralleled by educational approaches to religion that reinforced the idea of “Islam” as a matter of religious observance and classical texts (Hefner and Zaman 2006). Changes in educational approaches may in turn have been influ- enced by changes in the laws governing religious endowments that funded and housed Islamic schools. Again, law shows itself to be made of far more than state policy: what was authoritative to the Muslim believer, and what legitimate repertoires were available to that believer, had as much to do with political-economic considerations, educational institutions, and global Muslim networks as they did with the policies of the colonial state.

ProCESS iii: StAtE mAking

In the constitution of postindependence Malaysia, a Malay is defined as “a person who professes the religion of Islam, habitually speaks the Malay language . . . [and] conforms to Malay custom” (Federal Constitution of Malaysia, article 160, clause 2). In Malaysia today, therefore, it is legally impossible to be Malay and not be Muslim. This racial and religious cat- egory of Malay confers particular rights and privileges involving own- ing land, practicing business, and having a privileged national language (Malay) and religion (Islam). It has also given rise to heated debates over the equality of Malaysian citizens, the nature and purpose of the Malay- sian state, and the identity of Malays who are not Muslim.

Whereas the language of the Sharia and the rhetoric of Islamic reviv- alists and modernists would claim a universal Muslim umma, undiffer- entiated by nation, much less ethnicity, both the nation-state and ethnic identification have become an intrinsic part of what it now means to be a Muslim and what it now means to be a Muslim state. Forged during the colonial period, the identification of Islam with an ethnic group and the special relationship of that ethnic group with the state are central to many “Muslim states” today. In Malaya and India, through processes of negotiation between colonial and local elites, Islamic law became a codi- fied, state-centered system, limited to areas of personal and family law; the state became the final arbiter of Islam and Muslim identity; and Muslim elites became state elites. These changes have become the foundation of the

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modern Muslim state, and they marked a significant departure from the instance-based, judge-centered, and often diverse applications of Islamic law in these states prior to colonization.

The idea of a unified interest that could be represented by a single iden- tity—“Muslim”—was not unique to Malaya. Ayesha Jalal (2000) argues that, in India, the formation of the category of “Indian Muslim” as a self- identifier (rather than a colonial census category) emerged in part out of the need for actors to identify according to state categories in order to be recognized as challenging its policies. In this case, in order to be seen and heard by the state as opposing a particular vision of Islamic law and iden- tity, actors had to first identify with an “Indian Muslim” community and by doing so brought it into being as a political and public reality.

“It is the creative dimension of politics—politics as the changing of pref- erences—that highlights the relationship between power and responses to it, between power and consent, and teaches us that these are not simple opposites, but that power can and does generate its own form of consent” (Mamdani 1999, 864). It is to this new politics of Muslim preferences that I now turn: to the ways in which different groups of Muslim elites in India and Malaya strategized reform, used the multiple languages of the colonial period, and participated in the development of the Muslim state even as they attempted to navigate its colonial character.

The power of sultans as guardians of Malay privilege and culture was generally enhanced by their association with Islam, and many took on the role of protectors of Islam and heads of religion during the colonial period. However, when Islamic discourses of rulership, reform, and modernism changed in the nineteenth century, Malay rulers found themselves con- fronted by a new kind of Islamic elite who saw their institutions, symbols, and legitimacy as essentially Hindu accretions (Roff 1967; Milner 1982, 1991; Hirschman 1986). Then, their claims to Islamic legitimacy became problematic political issues. In the Malay state of Johor, for example, the sultan’s efforts to maintain the independence of his state from British encroachment involved judicial and administrative reforms, including a constitution (1895) that defined and legitimated his position, but also lim- ited its scope to functioning in tandem with a state government and its officers. It also established Islam as the religion of state and drew legal reforms from the Ottoman Majalla (civil code) (Borhan 2002).

While it is insufficient to equate reform with Westernization and mod- ernization—these steps were often taken to preserve the power of local

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elites and maintain the position of precolonial laws—it is also inadequate to see them as purely conservative measures. They may have been intended to consolidate the sultan’s power, but they also made possible the reentry of elites who had previously been excluded from the sultans’ compacts with the British. In the Ottoman Empire, and in some Malay and Indian states, it was the rulers themselves who made reforms that heightened their legiti- macy in both local and colonial eyes but also limited their powers.

ContEmPor Ary PAr AdoxES: WhAt’S PErSonAl About PErSonAl StAtuS?

The centralization of the state in Islam gave Islam a critical purchase in state authority and legitimacy. The symbolic and political potency of reli- gion is also that which undermines institutions, elites, and laws built in its name. It is the accordion-fold character of Islamic law—expandable to legitimate a state and its policies even while it is minimized in law and representation—that allows multiple groups with varied agendas to claim Islamic law against the state. More than this, the gap between ideals (both state and Islamic) and reality is necessary precisely because of these varied agendas and interpretations that states must balance. “If law reflects a ten- sion between what is and what might be, law can be maintained only as long as the two are close enough to reveal a line of human endeavor that brings them into temporary or partial reconciliation” (Cover 1983, 39).

Was this “line of human endeavor” strategic, calculated to maximize elite power and state interests, or was it faithful, a struggle, in the colonial case, between British notions of justice and civilization and local visions of the right society? The archives of British India and Malaya—treaties, trials, and documents of state formation—indicate that it was both. More important, the gap between “what is” and “what might be” was where the modern state, contemporary Islamic law, and Muslim identity were born. In this new politics, the definition of Islamic law as a fixed text with divine precedents, which needed to be defended against the encroachment of a Christian, alien ruler, played an important role for a number of Muslim groups. “The intimate interaction of legal administration and indigenous identity formation lent scripturalist Islam an enduring quality that has continued into the post-colonial period” (M. Anderson 1993, 185).

The fundamental irony of this political and religious choice is an irony that dogs Muslim activists to this day: the defense of a codified, authori-

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tarian, and essentialist Islamic law as authentically “Islamic,” when its history shows it to be a colonial construct, used initially to define and control a subject population. The tension intrinsic to law—between what is and what might be—describes the dilemma in which many Muslims find themselves today. The very divisibility of Islamic law into jurisdic- tions separate from the state indicates a profound departure from earlier notions of Islamic law, where the practices and norms of religion were not easily distinguished from that of the state. By dividing law among different groups, colonial and local elites profoundly altered Islamic law itself, and the yoking of separate domains of law to different ruling groups, insti- tutions, and interests would continue to have dramatic consequences for Islamic law, the Muslim state, and Muslim identity itself, well into the con- temporary period. “When the shari’a is structured essentially as defining personal status in the law, it is radically transformed. . . . What happens to the shari’a is not curtailment but transmutation. It is rendered into a subdivision of law that is authorized by the centralizing state. . . . It is secu- larized in distinctive ways” (Asad 2001, 7). For Talal Asad, the politics of Islamic law and Muslim identity are also inextricable from the historical development of the secular state. What appears a fundamental paradox, upon closer inspection, is really two halves of the same phenomenon (Asad 2001, 1).

In Malaya, for example, Malay elites were allowed autonomy over mat- ters of religion and culture and because of this became guardians solely of religion and culture, at the expense of the multiple roles they had previ- ously played. Changing what Malay elites represented ultimately changed who these elites were in relation to state and to society and focused their interests on preserving this domain of religion and culture. In 1930s India, Muslim elites demanded the codification of Islamic law, even though the original codification of Islamic law was done as a tool of colonial admin- istration, contrary to Islamic legal practices: the forms and powers of the colonial state had come to be seen as the legitimate domain of Islam. As Asad argues, law and the family became more closely linked in this new discourse: the family played an important role, predicated upon its new duality as a private space, but also a space upon which public good was founded and in which the individual was formed. Hence, the point at which began Lina Joy’s encounter with a state that could not recognize her as a Christian Malay was the fact that she could not marry her Christian fiancé if she were still a Muslim woman.

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ConCluSion

Taking on the model of state-in-society for the study of colonial state for- mation leads to a new point of departure for the study of the contemporary politics of religion: the categories of “public” and “private,” “religious” and “secular,” “family” and “state,” are dyads, interdependent and co-consti- tutive. In the modern state, the religious has no meaning separate from the secular; the private cannot be understood except through reference to the public. The same can be said about the relationship between Islamic law and secular law. To revisit the paradox faced by Lina Joy in Malaysia, the confinement of Islamic law to the domains of family, gender, religious observance, and confessional identity is inseparable from the centrality of Islamic law and Islam-centered politics within the modern Muslim state. The state has become an undeniable fact of Islamic law and Muslim poli- tics, and its institutions, jurisdictions, and language an inescapable part of even the most vehement Islamic opposition figures.

The politics of religion and the state are a politics of paradox. In the words of Roberto Unger (1976, 49), “Every act leads a double life: it con- stitutes conformity or disobedience to custom at the same time that it becomes part of the social process by which custom is defined,” a “double life” that the state-in-society approach traces through the everyday trans- formation of state actors and institutions and that allows for state acts intended to achieve one aim, to achieve the exact opposite. Looking reflex- ively back at moments—at treaties, trials, and texts—allows one to see that each treaty paved the way for a new configuration of power at the same time that it provoked intense conflict over those terms; each trial helped define Islam, law, and Muslim subjects, but also conceded large provinces of authority to judges and administrators; the textualization of Islam and Islamic law both stabilized them and opened the door for new texts that challenged the state. The denial of jurisdiction by Malaysian judges in sec- ular courts underlined both the power of the state to determine the line between secular and religious and the symbolic and legal significance of race and religion in the Malaysia state.

If the case of Lina Joy can serve as an exemplar, paradox perhaps exemplifies the experience of Islam in the contemporary world, binding Muslims and Muslim states in unexpected and intractable ways. The mul- tiple and ambivalent strands of state-society struggle during the colonial period have led to unintended and critical consequences for state order,

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social power, Islamic legal scope, and Muslim identity in the postcolonial period. Due to the politics of elite negotiation in the colonial period over jurisdiction in religious matters, ethnic identity now prevents religious conversion. Due to definitions of secular and religious in colonial courts, contemporary secular courts delegate to the Islamic courts but, at the same time, continue to deliberate matters of the Sharia. Due to state building by local rulers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, matters of family and faith are dictated by secular administrative law. Paradox is not only an empirical fact of the formation of state, society, religion, and law in the colonial period—it is an institutional and political legacy that continues to inform lawmaking and activism in the postcolonial Muslim world and whose analysis will challenge state-in-society scholars for years to come.

notES 1 “Lina Joy v. Majlis Agama Islam Wilayah Persekutuan & Anor,” April 18, 2001,

Current Law Journal (Supplementary Series) (2004), 242. 2 Ibid, 271. On article 160, section 2, the judge (Faiza Tamby Chik) commented:

“Islam has a special position in Malaysia. Therefore on freedom of religion by art. 11(4) State law and in respect of the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putra Jaya, federal law may control or restrict the propagation of any religious belief among persons professing the religion of Islam.”

3 “Lina Joy v. Majlis Agama Islam Wilayah Persekutuan & Ors, Court of Appeal Putrajaya,” September 19, 2005, Current Law Journal (2005), 666.

4 The title of this article refers to Migdal’s (2001a, 6) exhortation for social science scholars to pay attention to matters of “revelation and redemption, which have played such a central role in human history.”

5 The question of jurisdiction has also been a central preoccupation of Islamic legal history, and the struggles between ulema and rulers throughout Islamic history are well documented. The debates about siyasah shar’ iyyah (variously translated as “public interest” [Abou el Fadl 2003], government interest in shar’iah [al-Muhairi 1996], and Sharia-oriented policy [Kamali 2004]) are an important example of the treatment of the question of jurisdiction among Islamic legal scholars and within Islamic political history. In some ways, the colonial division of jurisdiction was a deliberate parallel to this model of Muslim political struggle; in others, it was markedly different.

6 British India is part of the Oxford English Dictionary definition of jurisdiction: “1844 h . h . W i l S o n Brit. India II. 129 The districts . . . were not intended to be exempted from the jurisdiction of the Company’s officers.”

7 Letter from governor-general and council to court of directors, Fort William, Cal- cutta, November 3, 1772.

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8 I discuss elsewhere (Hussin 2008) trials of elites after the Sepoy War (1857), the Perak War (1875), and the Urabi Revolt (1881).

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(Re)Creating Democracy through Practice

Insights from the Japanese Experience

mAry AliCE hAddAd

How do totalitarian regimes democratize? How does an undemocratic country transform its polity such that democratic values and practices become integral parts of its political culture? These are some of the most pressing questions of our time, and they are not easily answered by the current dominant approaches to the study of politics, which tend to divide the study of politics into studies of the state (government) on the one side and studies of society (everything that is not the government) on the other. By their very nature, totalitarian regimes strive to merge state and soci- ety: state institutions penetrate and co-opt social organizations in order to bend them to the wishes of the ruling regime; rulers and their cadres are often members of a single social grouping, whether family, clan, or sect, so their rise to power represents the co-optation of governmental institu- tions by one particular group. As daily newspaper headlines and consid- erable research attests, the process of democratization is a complex one requiring far more than adopting particular governmental institutions or social values. To understand how these kinds of regimes democratize, political scientists must move beyond old ways of inquiry. These questions are examined by looking at the case of democratization in postwar Japan through the lens of the state-in-society framework. The Japanese expe- rience and the state-in-society framework can be used to develop a new

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approach to the study of democratization, one that is particularly useful for explaining the democratization process outside of the West.

When a polity sets out to create a new democratic form of government it begins with lofty ideas drawn from a multitude of political resources both foreign and domestic. Political leaders then take some of those ideas and create a set of institutional structures that are intended to embody them. Finally, political leaders and citizens begin to put those ideas into practice in their everyday politics. At this point, the momentum of politi- cal change reverses course—instead of flowing from the top to the bot- tom, it shifts and moves from bottom to top. After some time in the new political institutional structure, the practices of citizens, their civic lead- ers, and those in high politics will transform the original set of ideas to make them more compatible with the dynamic situation on the ground. Newer democratic ideas will be modified to accommodate deeply held political beliefs that predated the introduction of democracy. Traditional ideas will be adjusted to accommodate newer democratic ways of thinking and doing. Eventually, civic and political leaders will seek to modify the institutional structure to better reflect the political practices and ideas that have become prevalent in society. With the creation of a new institutional structure, the process begins anew.

Every step of this process is contested, sometimes peacefully, some- times violently. With a multitude of political values to choose from, leaders battle each other about which ones will be institutionalized and what form those institutions will take. Citizens and elites chafe as new institutional structures restrict and restructure old ways of doing things. Their resis- tance and their innovation to overcome aspects that they do not like take multiple forms, many of which are incompatible with one another. Societal groups compete for influence as they attempt to spread political practices consistent with their emerging value system. Savvy political entrepreneurs make the most of opportunities created by accidents and serendipitous occasions and promote their own visions of the future. Some of them suc- ceed in having those visions take root in the popular consciousness; most fail. Both the content of policies and the process through which they come about have unintended consequences that may not even become apparent until decades later. The process is messy, painful, inspiring, and long—as the Japanese experience illustrates.

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StAtE-in-SoCiEty APProACh to thE Study of dEmoCr AtiZAtion

The state-in-society approach articulated by Joel S. Migdal (2001a) can be used to develop a new approach to the study of democratization that is rooted in the mutually transformative interaction of state and society. This approach conceptualizes the state as embedded in rather than indepen- dent from its society. Migdal (1994, 2001a) advocates a process-oriented approach to the study of politics that explicitly examines the practices of a state in addition to the image it portrays. An examination of practices can provide the necessary links between institutions and values in the study of democratization. Those practices also illuminate the important use of symbolic politics and rituals for changing the images that citizens and governments have of citizens, civic organizations, and government. The democratization process is a long one involving the mutual transforma- tion of state and societal institutions, values, and practices. Democratiza- tion is viewed as a collective response by both state and society aimed at addressing pressing social and political problems.

The process begins with a political crisis—caused by endogenous or exogenous forces—that acts as a catalyst for the development of a new political system. At that moment political actors, both elite and grassroots, draw on multiple political resources from foreign and indigenous sources to craft the institutional structure of a new political system designed to meet the needs of their society. For this transformation to count as the beginning of a democratization process, the new institutions must contain core democratic institutions—free press, equal political rights for citizens, free and fair electoral system, independent courts, and so forth—that will act as the foundation for the development and proliferation of democratic values and practices. The resulting institutions must ensure that the gov- ernment is “of, by, and for” the people.

The new institutional structures will then promote a number of new democratic political values such as political equality, individual liberty, and social responsibility. As these values are disseminated through soci- ety, they will be modified in order to accommodate important traditional political values present in that particular society. Political institutions and values are manifested in the practices of governmental and societal orga- nizations. Over time, organizational practices will be modified as a greater proportion of members and leaders have inculcated democratic values.

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New, pro-democratic practices will in turn reinforce the development and proliferation of democratic values. Eventually, political actors will take steps to remake fundamental political institutions in order to bring them into better alignment with the democratic values and practices that have become prevalent in society and make them more relevant to contempo- rary life. As was the case at the earlier stage, these leaders will utilize a wide array of political resources drawn from both foreign and indigenous sources to help (re)create a political system that addresses their current needs. Throughout the process they will disagree about which values are most important and what means are the most appropriate to institution- alize those values. The democracy created out of this process will, once again, be an amalgamation of the indigenous political culture as well as Western-influenced democracy and will be designed to address contem- porary social and political challenges.

Although conflicts between new democratic and indigenous political systems occur in many areas, the Japanese experience suggests that three in particular are likely to cause considerable difficulty: the extent of state involvement in society, the relationship between citizen and the state, and gender norms. Consolidation of democracy will only become possible if the polity devises a way to reconcile the ideological differences in all three areas. If the democratic values cannot be modified in ways that make it possible to honor important traditional values, they will be rejected, and democracy will fail. Similarly, if the traditional values and practices can- not be adjusted to accommodate new democratic norms, they will be for- gotten, discarded, or marginalized.

StAtE intErvEntion in SoCiEty: An in volvEd And ACCou ntAblE StAtE

Emerging from a society ripped apart by power conflicts between the church and the state, classic liberal democratic thinkers such as John Locke argued that the separation between church and state was vital for the development of modern government. These ideas of a limited, con- strained state conflict fundamentally with traditional Japanese political philosophy based on Confucianism in which the state is an extension of the individual and is expected to be deeply involved in society.1 How are these two images of the state reconciled? How are the practices of the state modified to accommodate democracy?

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Contemporary Japan has crafted a state that is much more inclusive than its predecessor. Power is increasingly being shared; it has moved out from the central bureaucracy to include political parties, local govern- ments, and nongovernmental actors. Yet this shift in power has not meant a reduction in the power or involvement of the central government. The process through which power sharing has occurred has, in many ways, enhanced the power of the central government. Certainly, it has increased the range and diversity of issue areas in which the government plays a sig- nificant role. As policy areas have diversified and as the number of organi- zations involved in policy making has pluralized, the mechanisms through which citizens are able to keep their government accountable have also multiplied. Essentially, democratization has led to the creation of a more involved and more accountable state in Japan. It has greater involvement in society and is more accountable to its public than its predecessor was.

A good example of greater power sharing is the recent spread of free- dom of information laws. Initiated by local municipalities, spurred on by activist lawyers and a visionary governor, the process culminated in the passage of the Law Concerning Access to Information Held by Adminis- trative Organs (often abbreviated as the FOI Law as shorthand for Free- dom of Information Law) in 1999.2 The legislation, which went into force in 2001, has enabled citizens and a wide array of citizen groups to use their claims to the new right to information to demand that government officials provide an accounting of the monies they use. Contemporary Japanese have granted their government greater access to their money and author- ity over a wider array of policy areas, but they have also required that the government be more transparent and accountable.

In the aftermath of the multimillion-dollar Sagawa Kyubin scandal in 1992, in which hundreds of politicians and bureaucrats were implicated in a wide-reaching corruption case involving the Sagawa Kyubin transporta- tion company, local lawyers in Sendai, a northern city that is the capital of Miyagi Prefecture, took advantage of their city’s information disclo- sure ordinances and asked for documents related to public spending in the hopes of uncovering evidence of the corruption of public officials that they suspected. They found curiously large amounts of money spent on food and drink—far in excess of what one would expect to cover incidental meals for staff working late. After their attempts to gain more information were blocked by local officials, they filed suit in the Sendai District Court.

Following a precedent set by a citizens’ group in Osaka, the Sendai

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lawyers and their colleagues across the country began to call themselves “Citizen Ombudsmen” and planned a coordinated strike. In April 1995, the groups filed identical requests concerning “food expenses” in each of Japan’s forty-seven prefectures. A month later they compiled the informa- tion they had gathered and estimated that Japanese local governments had spent nearly ¥300 billion (about $250 million) on what was claimed to be incidental food expenses (Repeta 2001).

Shirō Asano, Miyagi’s new governor, responded to the impending crisis by ordering his staff to do a thorough investigation and provided the Citi- zen Ombudsmen more information than they had originally requested. A year later, to cut down on the practice where local government officials treat central bureaucrats to lavish meals when they visit, Asano declared that no government money could be used to entertain public officials. This policy is now common practice in local governments across Japan.

Success in Miyagi has inspired activists across the country to create more Citizen Ombudsmen’s groups. In 1995, there were thirty, up from five in 1990, and by the end of the decade, there were ninety-six (Abe 2007, 125). Many activists have not restricted themselves to demanding information but go on to file a taxpayer lawsuit against the government on the charge of illegal use of public funds. From 1990 to 2000, the number of taxpayer suits jumped from 109 to 286 (Marshall 2007, 135).3

The activists won big in the Sendai case. However, their actions should not be seen only as the exercise of individual rights to public information, which would be a reasonable liberal democratic interpretation of their actions. Traditional Japanese values of community have also been promoted by both the laws and the ways that activists are making use of them. As one legal scholar has noted, “What is important is that ‘Citizens’ Ombudsmen’ groups do utilize rights the law conferred on them, but not for their own pri- vate interests. Rather, they use their legal rights for the purpose of protecting or promoting the public interests of their respective local communities” (Abe 2007, 131). Democratic values of transparency and accountability have been promoted, but in ways that have preserved and even enhanced tradi- tional values such as the moral role of political leaders and the importance of acting collectively on behalf of community rather than individual inter- ests. If scholars focus only on the creation of the pro-democratic freedom of information law, they will miss important aspects of the ways that Japan’s democratization process and the resultant democratic values, institutions, and practices are distinct from those found in other polities.

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CitiZEn rESPonSibilitiES: An inCluSivE And divErSE Civil SoCiEty

Wartime Japanese civil society was dominated by civic associations that had been incorporated into the fascist regime. For the most part, these organizations were the antithesis of what would now be considered appro- priate for a democratic civil society. They were racist, sexist, exclusive organizations with strict hierarchical power structures that were closely linked to the imperial regime.4 How are undemocratic ideas of citizenship transformed to promote democratic citizenship? How do undemocratic (even antidemocratic) civic organizations democratize?

Contemporary Japanese civil society has democratized by becoming more inclusive and diverse, even as it has retained important traditional values. Women’s increased involvement in volunteer fire departments is a good example of how traditional Japanese civil society has become more inclusive and diverse in order to accommodate democratic values and practices even as it has preserved traditional values. Volunteer fire depart- ments are revered institutions that trace their history to the Edo period (1603-1886). During World War II, the volunteer departments were trans- formed into the Civil Defense Corps, and membership was made man- datory for all men. After the war, the Allied occupation dismantled the corps, separated their functions from police, and returned control over the groups to local governments.5 There are currently 908,043 volunteer firefighters active across Japan, almost six times the number of career fire- fighters (156,082).6 Volunteers are found in nearly every city, town, and village in the country; 96 percent of Japan’s two thousand–plus munici- palities have a volunteer fire department.7

Just as they have in the past, volunteer firefighters are responsible for serving their communities in a series of roles. Their activities range from the most basic—putting out fires and cleaning up after them—to a wide variety of disaster prevention efforts including placing tall flags on fire hydrants so they can be found when the snow is high, teaching proper tempura cooking techniques to reduce fire hazards, running fire drills in apartment buildings, and educating the public about the use of fire extin- guishers. Additionally, volunteer firefighters are usually found at the cen- ter of community activities such as carrying the mikoshi (portable shrines) and keeping the peace during summer festivals.8

Traditionally, the typical volunteer firefighter was a male in his midt-

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wenties who worked for a small, family-owned business or farmed. He joined the department immediately after high school and lived and worked within blocks of the firehouse. Because there are very few men who meet that description in contemporary Japan, recruitment has been a problem for volunteer fire departments. Departments have looked to two groups in particular for new members: salarymen and women. The former required some slight modifications in training schedules and adjustments in the expectations of service. The inclusion of the latter group has been more of a challenge since the social aspect of the organization has been defined primarily by its masculinity.

Although the overall number of volunteer firefighters has been declin- ing slightly every year for the past several decades, the number of women has been rapidly increasing. For example, during the past fifteen years, the number of volunteer firefighters has declined by 9 percent, but the number of women has increased by 720 percent. In spite of their dramatic increase, women still represent only 1.5 percent of all volunteer firefighters in Japan.9

Fully integrating women into the volunteer fire department would fun- damentally change the nature of the organization, which acts as a men’s club in many respects. Although the organization’s activity is firefighting, in some ways it could equally be football—physically demanding, a team effort requiring regular training. Much of the socializing after training or events takes the form of drinking at the firehouse with the other men. There are coed activities, such as an annual trip with wives to the hot springs, but these are secondary to the main activities, which are all male. Including women in all of these activities would fundamentally change the social character of the organization.10

The story of Kashihara’s volunteer fire department illustrates how one department has successfully diversified its membership to include women in ways that, for me, simultaneously preserve distinctive roles. After the devastating earthquake in 1995 in nearby Kobe and in conjunction with national initiatives to increase local disaster prevention programs, Kashi- hara decided to expand its volunteer fire department by 79 percent (to 258 volunteers); it added men to the existing units and created two new men’s units and one all-women’s unit. The women’s unit and its unit chief have the same legal and organizational standing as the men’s units (e.g., women members are entitled to the same death, disability, and retirement benefits as the men). However, the women’s unit has several distinct features.

Unlike the men’s units, which are based on elementary-school district

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lines, the women’s unit draws its members from across the entire city. This has several consequences. First, the women do not have a firehouse of their own. Although recruitment posters picture women with hoses spraying buildings, the women’s unit does not have any equipment other than their uniforms, and they do not fight live fires. Second, because the women are drawn from the entire city and because their participation is more recent, they are recruited differently and join for different reasons than the men do. While the men generally join because they feel that it is their civic responsibility to do so and because they were asked, women join because they think it will be fun.11 Although they take their work seriously and it is very important to the community, their motivation for joining resembles participation in a hobby club more than it does a life-threatening com- munity obligation. They join either because they have a friend already in the unit or because they are inspired by one of the volunteer recruitment campaigns conducted by the city.

Kashihara is a dense, urban city with a population of about one hun- dred thousand people. All the units of the volunteer department fall into the category of “second responder” since the city fire department can reach the entire city ahead of the volunteers. This means that both the men and the women are rarely called on to fight fires directly, and their primary activities are fire prevention and disaster readiness. The men’s units still conduct regular training with hoses and are occasionally called on to help fight or clean up after a fire. The women volunteer firefighters join the men’s local unit for monthly training (the thirty women are spread over the entire city, so the number of women at any given monthly train- ing would be two to six depending on the district). However, they do not answer calls with the men, focusing instead on fire prevention activities and community outreach.

The women’s unit has taken the initiative to start a whole series of fire prevention and safety programs in which the men’s units do not partici- pate. Examples include a program where the firefighters visit elderly resi- dents who live alone. After an initial introduction by a volunteer welfare commissioner, a pair of volunteer firefighters brings a bento (box) lunch and performs a house fire inspection, checking for fire hazards such as a poorly placed stove, an overloaded electrical outlet, or a dangerous incense burner in a Buddhist altar. The women’s unit also took the initiative to design and distribute large-print emergency telephone number placards for elderly to keep by their telephones for easy reference. They lead ele-

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mentary-school fire prevention parades where the children bang the tradi- tional wooden blocks together and learn fire safety. Their unit has a special role as a color guard during the annual firefighting festival and marches in formation with bright flags. The volunteer fire chief is very proud of them and is pleased with their accomplishments and the new image they have brought to the department.12

Kashihara has found a workable compromise between traditional and more democratic ideas of civic responsibility. Traditional values empha- sized a man’s duty to join his volunteer fire department to protect his and his neighbors’ family and homes. Contemporary democratic values hold that anyone interested in an activity should be able to participate, including women. Kashihara has brought women into its ranks, and they are treated with respect. The women enjoy their service and have found ways to bring greater relevance and visibility to the entire department. However, the male culture of the departments has been carefully maintained. The men continue to meet after trainings for male bonding and drinking sessions. The men are still the ones who engage in the dangerous activity of fighting live fires, while the women are protected, helping with cleanup and com- munity outreach. None of the volunteer firefighters whom I spoke with in the department had any complaints about this arrangement. Everyone was very happy with the direction in which their department was going.

Although some scholars may debate whether civil society can exist before democracy, associations and other community organizations are often prevalent even in nondemocratic settings.13 In many cases, as was true for Japan and for its volunteer fire departments in particular, these groups are often fully incorporated into totalitarian regimes. Merely changing the legal framework that governs these groups will not change the culture of the organization. Focusing only on the institutional aspects of democratic transition without attention to the practices of grassroots organizations misses important elements of democratic transition. Schol- ars must pay attention to the practices in society lest they be fooled by merely the image of the state.

gEndEr nor mS: morE ACCESS but lESS PoWEr?

Of the three issues this chapter identifies in which new democratic ideas and practices conflict with the pre-democratic political culture, gender norms have been perhaps the most difficult to reconcile in Japan. This is

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not surprising since even in the most advanced democracies, gender norms continue to be highly contentious. Indeed, according to research by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart (2002), differences in gender norms rather than in any particular political value are the root of the ideological division between the West and “the rest.” For Japanese women, democratization has had paradoxical effects on their power: Contemporary Japanese women have significantly more individual power to determine the course of their own lives, but they may have less collective power to influence society.

Democratic norms of equal opportunity coupled with a successful cap- italist economy have given talented women unprecedented power to con- trol their own lives. They can choose whether and whom to marry. They can decide what job to take and when and under what circumstances to leave it. They can pursue an array of personal interests. They are in a strong negotiating position when they determine the nature of their relationships with the rest of their family. They can run for and win top-elected posi- tions in government, and they are doing so at ever-increasing rates.

Furthermore, having women serve in positions of power—in govern- ment, in business, in civil society organization—has transformed the culture of those organizations, and by extension Japanese culture more

0.00

5.00

10.00

15.00

20.00

25.00

19 76 19 80 19 83 19 86 19 89 19 92 19 95 19 98 20 01 20 04

House of Representatives

House of Councilors

Prefectures

Special Wards

Cities

Designated Cities

Towns and Villages

C h A rt 1 : Percent of Elected Women Representatives in Public Office*

* Data from Historical Statistics of Japan, tables 27-5, 27-9, 27-12 links from “gender” tables, http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/chouki/gender.htm (accessed 12/10/08)

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broadly, into one where women are more willing to voice their opinions. This is illustrated in excerpts from a 2006 interview I had with Michiko Suyama, a member of the town council in the rural community of Minam- itane. She thought that it was substantively as well as symbolically impor- tant that she, a woman, had been elected to the town council.

In 1999, I became the first women to be elected to my town council. I think that women see things differently. They see things that the men don’t see, so it is good to have them in the assembly.

This is how democracy happened. Before, the women couldn’t talk to the men. There was lots of education

on how to speak up. This continues even today—education on equality. Now that I’m a member of the legislature, there are also more women

in the town government. None at the top levels, but there are more at the middle management levels . . .

Now that I’m a legislator, I feel like there is less pushing down of women. I really think it has gotten better.

[Even] within the women’s association, women used to be afraid to voice their opinion, but now they speak their opinion freely. In the PTA [Parent-Teacher Association] activities too, they speak out. They really say what they want to say.

Japanese women may have more access to elected offices, but they still make up a very small percentage of elected representatives. Furthermore, when these women act as elected officials, they represent the interests of all of their constituents, not just women. Japan’s pre-democratic politi- cal system prohibited women from exercising power in many of the most powerful political institutions, but it expected women to have different interests from men and created specific institutions to gather those inter- ests together and express them. Those organizations, such as women’s associations, were not as powerful as their male counterparts, but they were institutionally incorporated into the policy-making and implemen- tation processes.14 As women’s access to formerly all-male organizations has increased and as many traditional organizations have been unable (or unwilling) to accommodate the new lifestyles and interests of younger women, traditional women’s organizations have lost power.

The experiences of local women’s associations in two adjacent rural communities illustrate this difference. In 2006, when I visited them, the

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first town’s association had a large membership of nearly a thousand women (the town’s population was about seven thousand), 80 percent of whom were working outside the home. It was involved in a wide range of activities, from study groups and visiting lectures that sometimes involved political topics, to service-oriented activities to help the elderly and chil- dren, to projects to improve the local environment and strengthen com- munity friendships.

The experience of the women’s association just one town over was very different. That group had only about one hundred members even though the population of the municipality was almost three times as large as its neighboring town. Its leader spoke nostalgically of all the things the group used to do: organize study and hobby circles, take a lead role in local fes- tivals and events, and act as key consultant to the city government. The women in that association are still involved in local festivals, and they con- tinue to gather to share concerns and offer support, but the organization is much less vibrant and the government no longer seeks its advice. That group had not figured out a way to ask or attract new members to join the organization. In fact, most of the other townspeople with whom I spoke thought the association had disappeared completely.

There do not appear to be any systematic studies of women’s associa- tions in Japan from which to make a judgment about which of these two experiences is more typical. However, Chifuren, the national umbrella organization for local women’s associations, estimates that their member- ship has fallen from 8 million at the organization’s founding in 1952 to 5 million today.15 As the activities of these two groups indicate, even vibrant associations have become less involved in politics and policy than they used to be.16

As these examples show, the political outcome of democracy on wom- en’s political power has been paradoxical—with democratization, Japa- nese women have expanded their individual access to positions of political power and power over their individual lives, but they have lessened their collective power. No longer are there regular, institutionalized methods for collecting women’s collective thoughts about their needs. This down- side of the transformation of women’s political power would likely have been invisible to a scholar focused entirely on democratic institutions and values, since the older source of power came from local, pre-democratic political practices and ideas.

It may be that this reduction in collective power is temporary, a kind of

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lag effect in which traditional institutions for exercising gendered power have disintegrated, but other ways in which women employ power in dem- ocratic politics have not yet fully formed.17 In the coming decades, when more and more women are elected to public office, it may be that the inter- ests of women, as women, are once again given a place in Japanese politics. It may also be that there is less of a need for a voice that is distinctively women’s. As individual lives become more diverse even as social roles become less differentiated, the political needs of men and women may be merging, or at least becoming equally incoherent. Men’s interest in the health of the job market has become a worry for women as well. Women’s interest in the availability of child care has become a concern of men too. To take another example, an organization of married, stay-at-home moth- ers would certainly not represent the interests of all or even most Japa- nese women today. In other words, it may be that gendered perspectives on policy issues are less salient than they used to be.

These challenges have not yet been resolved in Japanese politics, nor are they likely to be in the near future. The combination of democratic and traditional Japanese political values, institutions, and practices has given birth to an unprecedented range of opportunities for both men and women, but the shifts in power have not been without their unanticipated side effects.

ConCluSion: thE bEnEfitS of A StAtE-in-SoCiEty APProACh to thE Study of dEmoCr AtiZAtion

The state-in-society approach is highly beneficial for the study of democ- ratization, especially in the context of a non-Western society. The state- in-society approach has thus far been used largely to study undemocratic societies, but it can be productively expanded to examine the process of democratization itself. This approach requires the researcher to examine the interaction between the new democratic ideas and practices that are being introduced to society and those already present in the local political culture. This approach has two main benefits to offer students of compara- tive politics and to those examining democracy in particular.

First, it offers an analytically rigorous way of incorporating culture into studies of comparative politics. Although anyone who has lived in and studied another country (or even a different region within the same country) can attest, culture matters in politics. However, it has been very

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difficult to determine what part of culture or what about culture matters. The state-in-society approach to the study of democratization requires researchers to ground their studies of a particular state in the society from which it emerges, offering an analytically rigorous way of incorporating culture into the study of politics. This is particularly important in studies of democratization where the terms of the discussion have been largely dominated by Western, liberal democracy theories. As the case of Japan demonstrates, to understand the timing, nature, and process of democra- tization, one must look at the mutually transformative interaction between new democratic institutions, values, and practices and those of the tradi- tional indigenous political system.

A second advantage of this state-in-society approach to the study of democratization is that it creates an agency-driven model of democrati- zation. Who creates democracy? For most prevailing theoretical perspec- tives on democracy—those that emphasize governmental institutions, those that emphasize citizen values, and those that emphasize civil soci- ety—democratization is largely structurally determined. Polities either have the “right” institutions, values, or type of civil society or they do not. In contrast, through its examination of institutions, values, and practices, the state-in-society approach to the study of democratization is rooted in the actions of individual political leaders as well as civic and governmental organizations. Who creates democracy? Governor Asano, Kashihara’s vol- unteer fire department chief, town councilwoman Suyama, and millions of others like them are working hard to improve their neighborhoods and towns. These local heroes are making small changes in their own commu- nities that combine to cause massive transformations in national political culture. Democracies do not emerge on their own, nor are they given from one state to another. Democracy is government “of, by, and for” the peo- ple. The people are the ones doing the work; they are the ones who make democracy real for their communities and countries.

The state-in-society approach breaks up the dichotomous categories of political science and forces scholars to recognize the interconnections between philosophical ideas, everyday practices, and political institu- tions. The most important questions in comparative politics are not about whether the state or society is the more powerful in a political system but the ways that both state and society shape and reshape each other in response to the changing world around them. Finding ways to research those connections as well as the conflicts and possibilities that arise from

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them should be the primary task of political scientists in the twenty-first century.

notES I would like to thank Joel Migdal for his mentorship over more than a decade and

for comments on this chapter in particular. This chapter draws on research of a larger project, Haddad 2012.

1 For the role of Confucianism in prewar Japanese political philosophy, see Ketcham 2006, Goto-Jones 2005, Nosco 1984, and especially Maruyama 1974.

2 For a good overview of the origins of information disclosure laws, see Kingston 2004, chap. 2. A similar pattern of local communities setting regulations first and the central government following has occurred with genetically modified food (GMO) regulations; see Tiberghien 2006, 1-49.

3 Note that the success of these cases is still quite small: information disclosure suits win about half the time, but only 6 percent of taxpayer lawsuits are successful. See Marshall 2004, 34-45.

4 For accounts of these types of groups in prewar and wartime Japan, see Braibanti 1948, Hastings 1995, and Takayose 1979.

5 For an excellent history of volunteer fire departments in Japan, see Takatsuji and Tsuji 1983; Sumiyoshi 2000, 27-31; and Tokyo No Shoubou Hyaku Kinen Gyouji Suishin Iinkai (Association for the Promotion of Tokyo Firefighting Hundred Year Anniversary) 1980. For a more detailed discussion of their democratization, see Haddad 2012.

6 Data on volunteer firefighters retrieved from the Volunteer Fire Department home page (in Japanese), http://www.fdma.go.jp/syobodan/whats/data.html (accessed August 28, 2006).

7 For the number of volunteer fire departments, see Soumushou Shoubouchou (Fire- fighting Bureau, Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts, and Tele- communication), various years. For the number of municipalities, see Soumusho Jichigyouseikyoku Shichousonka (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Local Government City, Town, Village Department) 2005, 2. A huge thank-you to Michael Strausz for tracking down these numbers for me.

8 As I discuss in the following section, disaster prevention activities have expanded in many departments since the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. Just as was the case following the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, the disaster served as the catalyst for the formation and expansion of many different types of civil society organiza- tions. For more on the civil society response to the 1923 earthquake, see Hastings 1995, 55; and Iokibe 1999. For the effect of the 1995 earthquake, see Okamoto 1997.

9 Volunteer Fire Department home page, http://www.fdma.go.jp/syobodan/whats/ data.html (accessed August 30, 2006).

10 For a terrific account of the masculine culture of volunteer fire departments and the fetishism of firefighting equipment in the American context, see Greenberg 1998, chap. 2.

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11 For more about how these two different attitudes toward volunteering influence community volunteer participation patterns, see Haddad 2007.

12 Most of this information came from interviews I conducted in Kashihara during 2002. Some information may also be found in Henshukyoku (Editing Bureau) (2000, 46-54), which talks about the expansion of the Kashihara department in response to the Hanshin-Awaji earthquake.

13 For an excellent discussion of this debate, see Bermeo and Nord 2000. 14 For a terrific account of how this incorporation worked, see Garon 1997, chaps. 3-4. 15 E-mail correspondence with Chifuren, 2007. 16 For a history of women’s associations and an account of what they did in the prewar

and early postwar periods, see Garon 1997, chaps. 4-6. 17 For an account of this kind of lag—between electoral enfranchisement and the abil-

ity to lobby for particular women’s interest—in the United States, see Harvey 1998.

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11

Negotiating National Identity

Berber Activism and the Moroccan State

SEnEm ASlAn

On October 17, 2001, in the presence of his advisors, members of the gov- ernment, and leaders of the political parties and unions, the Moroccan king Mohammed VI announced the establishment of the Royal Institute of the Amazigh Culture (l’Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe, or IRCAM).1 The institute was charged with conducting research on different aspects of Berber culture and preparing school textbooks to teach elementary school students the standardized Berber language to make it “a source of pride for all Moroccans.”2 These initiatives represented a dramatic reversal of the official definition of national identity and a major victory for Berber activists in their long struggle for cultural recognition. The establishment of IRCAM represented the first substantial change in the state’s attitude toward its Berber-speaking population, from a policy of subtle neglect to explicit recognition and support.

The interaction between the Moroccan state and Amazigh activ- ists provides important insights into the conditions under which ethnic movements become successful in transforming the conventional nation- building policies of states. The bulk of the social movement literature takes a state-centric approach and concentrates on how states determine the fate of social movements, not the opposite. That is, scholars tend to dis- regard the possibility that social movements can influence state policies

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as much as state policies affect the fate of social movements. A limited body of research, taking a bottom-up approach, analyzes the impact of social mobilization on legislation and institutional change.3 This bottom- up approach is built on case studies of movements in democratic countries where rights activists find at least some channels, especially through litiga- tion, to promote policy reform. The social movement literature is mostly silent on the ability of rights activists to influence policy changes in coun- tries where basic individual rights of expression and association are not guaranteed and where there is no independent judiciary. It is assumed that in undemocratic systems social movements have little impact because gov- ernments are not accountable to people and simply would not consider the need to respond to social demands (Burstein 1999). This case study on Morocco discusses how activists can create their own political opportuni- ties and influence policy change even in authoritarian contexts.

This case study is explored through the “state-in-society” framework (Migdal, Kohli, and Shue 1994; Migdal 2001a), which emphasizes that state and society do not exist independent of each other and that a mutually trans- formative relationship between social actors and the state should be taken into account. It calls attention to Berber activists’ specific strategies, in par- ticular their use of informal channels to negotiate with the state center and strategic concessions to placate the state, in explaining their policy success. Such change in policy, nevertheless, also worked to transform the move- ment in ways unintended by Berber activists. This study also underlines the gap between the state image and its practices and calls attention to the non-monolithic nature of states. While the Berber activists formulated their strategies in accordance with the monarch’s image as the “ultimate arbiter” of competing interests and ultimate decision maker of the country, they were disappointed by the state’s actual practices, which various parts of the state at different levels undertook. As Joel S. Migdal (1994, 14) argues, policy implementation is rarely a clean and smooth process controlled by the top leadership, “as if it alone constitutes the state, as if its collective will is re- created faithfully throughout the labyrinth of state branches and bureaus.” In Morocco, too, implementation of policy changes proceeded slowly, unevenly, and with contention on the ground because of bureaucratic resistance and unwillingness to recognize Berber identity as a component of Moroccanness. As William Roseberry (1994, 365) states, “The state . . . has a number of audi- ences who hear different things and who, in repeating what the state says to still other audiences, change the words, tones, inflections, and meanings.”

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thE AmAZigh movEmEnt

Soon after its independence from French colonial rule in 1956, the Moroc- can state began to implement Arabization policies, which aimed at the exclusive use of Modern Standard Arabic in education, bureaucracy, and the courts. The nationalist discourse emphasized the Arab-Islamic char- acter of Moroccanness; underscored the purity, superiority, and sacred- ness of Classical Arabic; and portrayed the Berber dialects as inferior and deformed. The Amazigh movement emerged as a response to Arabization policies. While the first Amazigh organizations can be dated back to the mid-1960s, the movement made its real appearance in the Moroccan polit- ical arena by the beginning of the 1990s. In the pre-1990 period, public expressions of Berberness could carry a substantial cost. Criticizing Ara- bization policies, questioning the official historical narrative of Morocco, advocating Amazigh rights, and using the old Berber script in public spaces could be perceived as threats to national unity and be subject to prosecution.4

The 1990s were a period of change in Morocco, resulting from the intersection of a number of domestic and international factors. The mon- archy was pushed hard to open up the regime due to growing domestic demands for social reforms and power sharing, a worsening economic crisis, and increased international pressure on the state for improvement of human rights. Domestic unrest became more visible to the monarchy through increased demonstrations and strikes in the 1980s and, coupled with the rise of the Islamic challenge, put pressure on the late Moroccan king Hassan II to undertake certain political reforms. In order to direct the mass discontent into institutionalized channels, which could more easily be controlled by the state, freedoms of association and expression were expanded. Although the king did not give up any of his powers and remained as the ultimate decision maker in the political system, he allowed for the burgeoning of civil society as well as a freer and more vocal press.5

The increased freedom of association and the press opened up oppor- tunities for Amazigh activists to establish additional organizations; hold conferences, demonstrations, and sit-ins; and publish their own journals. The 1990s became a period when Amazigh associations proliferated, both at the national and local levels, and when the movement expanded from an intellectual elite to a larger population of Berber students and newly urbanized youth. The movement gradually shifted from a cultural to a

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political arena as the activists’ demands for the official recognition of the “right of difference” became more pronounced. The 1991 “Agadir Char- ter” became the first systematic text that explicitly stated the grievances and demands of the Amazigh movement and was originally signed by six associations. The charter underlined the indigenousness of the Amazigh culture in Moroccan territory, criticized the official presentation of the Arab-Muslim culture as the only constitutive element of Moroccan cul- tural identity, and called attention to the marginalization of the Berber language and culture for the sake of Arabism and national unity. The text enumerated the demands of Amazigh activists: the constitutional estab- lishment of Tamazight as an official language alongside Arabic, the estab- lishment of a national institute for the standardization of the Amazigh language, the integration of the Amazigh language and culture into the educational domain, the right to use the Amazigh language in written and visual media, and the encouragement of Amazigh cultural production and language teaching.6 The preparation of the Agadir Charter and the absence of any direct state action against it led to a resurgence of Amazigh activ- ism. By the end of the 1990s, over forty associations represented the move- ment (Kratochwil 1999, 154).

The state’s response toward the sudden resurgence of Amazigh activism was twofold. On the one hand, it opened up the political space significantly and allowed for the free expression of Berber identity in public. On the other hand, it also sent certain signals to the activists, warning them about the consequences of politicization and radicalization and reminding them of the limits of their recognition and legitimacy. The 1994 arrest of sev- eral Amazigh activists for carrying banners calling for the constitutional recognition of Tamazight served as a signal of intimidation to the activ- ists about the consequences of challenging state power. Official attempts to warn and discipline the activists were also accompanied by small accom- modations. In a speech in 1994, King Hassan II openly acknowledged the multi-ethno-linguistic character of Moroccan society and declared his intention to allow the teaching of Berber dialects in schools. Such discur- sive change, nevertheless, did not immediately translate into policy change. A real change from the previous policy of neglect would not take place until after Mohammed VI came to power, following Hassan II’s death. This brings into the frame the question of how the Berber activists took advantage of the political opportunities at a time when the regime showed signs of relaxation and how they created their own opportunities through

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specific strategies that helped them influence policy in important ways.

PlACAting thE StAtE: Str AtEgiC ConCESSionS And thE rolE of mEdiAtorS

After Hassan II’s death, his thirty-six-year-old son, Mohammed VI, suc- ceeded to the throne in July 1999. With the prospect that the new king would bring political change, the compromising manner in which the Berber activists expressed their grievances and their use of informal chan- nels to attract the attention of the palace helped them influence policy in accordance with their demands. The process that led to the establishment of IRCAM began with the preparation of the “Amazigh Manifesto” by Mohamed Chafik right after the death of Hassan II. The choice of Chafik as the manifesto’s author by a group of activists, who wanted to present the finished text to the state authorities, was hardly coincidental. Chafik was revered both by Amazigh activists and by those in official circles. He had been Mohammed VI’s professor while director of the Royal College and had contacts with the palace circles. The activists hoped that Chafik’s authorship and mediation would provide the Amazigh movement with immunity from state persecution. The twenty-two-page document, ini- tially signed by over two hundred activists, harshly criticized past policies (especially the repressive policies and arbitrariness of the Hassan II period, as well as extensive corruption and clientelism); presented a new historical narrative, different from the official history; called on the state to recog- nize Amazigh demands; and emphasized the activists’ determination to fight against cultural hegemony.7

Despite its harsh critiques, the manifesto was carefully worded not to challenge the founding principles of the regime, namely, Islam, territo- rial integrity, and allegiance to the king and the monarchy. While there has been general agreement among activists that Morocco should be con- sidered Berber country given that the majority of the population have Berber ancestors, the manifesto underlined for the Berber population the importance of speaking Arabic: “Our faithfulness to the [attitude] of our ancestors towards Arabic is a good guarantee for our continued cultiva- tion of Arabic and attachment to it. For it is the key to the acquisition of an in-depth knowledge of religious matters; it is also the strongest link between us and our Arab brothers in the Maghreb and the Middle East.”8 More important, the activists’ concessions related to the role of Islam in

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Morocco. Since its beginning, the Amazigh movement has had a highly secularist character. The Amazigh activists, along with Moroccan femi- nists, have strongly supported initiatives to free family law from Islamic law and have been the main opponents of the rising Islamic movement.9 They have also been highly critical of the state’s use of Islam as the main building block of the nationalist ideology after independence. The activ- ists think that the dogmatic interpretation of Islam was the main reason behind the marginalization of the Amazigh language and culture, as it transformed the Arabic language into a holy language. Many of the activ- ists interviewed were highly critical of the Moroccan state’s non-secular character and advocated the separation of state and religion.10 Despite the secularist character of the Amazigh movement, the texts that addressed the state elite did not imply any challenges to the Islamic foundations of the regime; on the contrary, they explicitly acknowledged its strong pres- ence. The Amazigh Manifesto of 2000 was full of references to God and gave examples from the Qur’an to support its arguments. To reaffirm that the Amazigh movement did not present an attack against Islamic values and unity, the manifesto noted that the Amazigh political traditions, par- ticularly the managing of communal affairs in jemaas (tribal councils), had been in line with the political traditions practiced by Prophet Muhammad and the first four caliphs. As Bruce Maddy-Weitzman (2007, 54) under- lines, the manifesto was an attempt “to incorporate Moroccan Islam into Amazigh identity.”

The manifesto also assured the new king of the Amazigh activists’ loy- alty to the monarchy and signified the movement’s willingness to cooperate with the king to resolve conflicts. It was carefully worded not to present any accusations against the earlier monarchs with regard to their policies on the Berbers; rather, it put the blame on the ambiguously defined “makhze- nian circles,” which with their “dogmatic religious thinking” misdirected the sultans.11 The manifesto accused “the forces of the political right and left,” without an explicit critique of Hassan II, for the problems that the Berbers suffered from, such as Arabization and economic marginalization, during the postcolonial period. Instead, Hassan II was portrayed as a mere victim of the “makhzenian circles”; he understood the importance of the Amazigh demands but was unable to lead any policy changes because these circles blocked progress. According to Hassan Rachik (2006, 50), many of the Amazigh signatories of the petitions sent to the state elite were willing to make certain concessions because they thought that moderate demands

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would have more chance of being accepted by the king and the government. In my conversations with them, some activists confirmed that, for strategic reasons, certain issues—most important among them the religious charac- ter of the regime—were not brought up in the manifesto (as well as in other petitions and letters) submitted to the political elite.

In fact, through these strategic concessions, the Amazigh activists had been acting in accordance with the officially propagated image of the mon- arch as the “supreme arbiter” or “father of the nation,” who is above politics and who intervenes and dispenses justice at crucial moments of societal conflict.12 Such an image of the monarch was complemented by a policy of co-optation as a standard instrument of the monarchy in its attempts to control and dominate the political challenges against its authority. The Moroccan monarchy’s strategy in dealing with the rising social and political demands has rested not only on intimidation and repression but also on incorporation and co-optation. In almost every new challenge the Moroccan regime has encountered from society, its consistent strategy has been to incorporate the moderate representatives of the challenging group into state channels and harshly punish the radical regime’s dissi- dents.13 As Ellen Lust-Okar (2005, 79) suggests, when regimes use selective co-optation, opponents are likely to moderate their policy demands, but not necessarily their true preferences, when they sense that inclusion in the system is probable. Given several previous examples of selective co- optation, the conciliatory attitude of Amazigh activists was informed by this fatherly image of the monarch who grants royal tutelage to his loyal subjects.

After preparing the manifesto, activists used channels of personal influence to reach the state’s center. They found a suitable mediator, Has- san Aourid, to convey their message to the king. Aourid, who became the spokesman of the palace after Mohammed VI came to power, had been Mohammed VI’s classmate at the Royal College. He also knew the Amazigh movement quite well, having studied it for his dissertation. Aourid’s mediating role was critical in attracting the palace’s attention to the manifesto and starting the negotiations. In the coming days, the king asked Aourid, along with his two other advisors, to listen to Chafik and the leading representatives of the movement. During the meeting, the con- tent of the manifesto was discussed in depth. The meeting, nevertheless, seemed to have born no fruit in the short term. Lack of an official response led activists to prepare for a congress. They planned to discuss the mani-

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festo and what their future strategy should be in the absence of further official concessions. The Ministry of the Interior immediately banned the congress, and the police closed off the roads to the town where the meet- ing was supposed to take place. The attendees were asked to return home. Professor Chafik intervened and invited the activists to meet in his house, in Meknés, on that same day. Soon the punitive measure was followed by a message of accommodation from the king, as long as the activists were willing to negotiate. While the meeting was taking place in Chafik’s house, Aourid, along with two royal advisors, visited the house and told Chafik about the king’s plans to establish an institute to develop the Berber lan- guage and culture.14 The following few months passed, with the prepara- tion of the royal edict that would establish the institute by a committee of four, which included Aourid. On October 17, 2001, Mohammed VI finally announced the establishment of IRCAM.

The Moroccan state’s accommodation of Amazigh demands through the establishment of IRCAM underlines the capabilities of social move- ments to create their own political opportunities and promote policy reform in authoritarian contexts, where neither independent courts nor a free civil society could act as effective mechanisms of influence and pres- sure on the state’s center of power. Through a combination of concilia- tory messages and the use of personal networks of influence, the Amazigh activists played an important role in having the Moroccan state recognize some of their major demands. The interaction between the Moroccan state and the Amazigh activists, nevertheless, has been a mutually transforma- tive one. While the establishment of IRCAM underlined the integration of Berber identity into the official discourse of Moroccanness and could be seen as Amazigh activism’s success, it also influenced the movement in important ways. The establishment of IRCAM as an institution tightly linked to the palace soon created a fierce debate within the Amazigh move- ment and divided it into two camps, with considerable tension between them. The first camp includes those who accept working at IRCAM and believe that policy change is possible only when they cooperate with the state. The second camp is composed of activists who refuse to work at IRCAM. They point to the high salaries and luxurious working conditions of IRCAM employees and perceive these as the state’s attempt to buy off Amazigh activism and control its demands.15 While the movement seems more fragmented and polarized than in the past, it is too early to tell to what extent the monarchy’s inclusion of activists in a state institution helps

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it manipulate and control Amazigh activism or to what extent this frag- mentation will reduce activists’ ability to assert pressure on the state. Part of the answer depends on the consequences of struggles going on in mul- tiple arenas of the state.

Struggling AgAinSt AmAZigh ACtiviSm: diffErEnt fACES of thE StAtE

The Moroccan state’s response toward Amazigh activism has been far from unitary, and Amazigh activism has encountered some serious oppo- sition from different levels of the state. In the second half of the 1990s, increased official willingness to address Amazigh demands was accom- panied by signs of a renewed Arabization process. A controversy over the Moroccanness of Berber names was one indicator of this process and started when a national registration campaign began in 1996.16 This cam- paign was aimed at registering citizens who lived in remote rural areas and who did not have an identity card. Most registration did not take place until the 1970s and was not complete even in the 1990s (Hoffman 2000). As part of the new registration campaign, a new royal decree (dahir) was proclaimed in November 1996 stipulating that citizens’ first names shall be original Moroccan first names and that the names should not create a threat against the society’s customs or national security.17 Although the law did not explicitly ban Berber names, many registrars were not sym- pathetic to growing Amazigh demands and rejected Berber names on the grounds that they were not Moroccan names. In 1995, the Interior Minis- try, headed by the infamous Driss Basri, who had been the longtime main aide of Hassan II, sent a circular to the governors with a list of permissible names. Although some Berber names were included, many others were left off. The list received a strong reaction from Amazigh activists, who argued that its aim was to outlaw the customary naming practices of the Berbers, and they challenged this practice through litigation (Houdaïfa 2006, 35). The controversy continues to this day. While some courts and registration offices allow parents to give Berber names to their children, others reject similar demands. According to Chafik (2005), such resistance against Ber- ber names indicates the Arabist ideology’s popularity within the adminis- tration, especially among the local authorities.

The establishment of IRCAM also has opened up new arenas of strug- gle within the Moroccan state. The main task of IRCAM has been the uni-

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fication and transformation of three Berber dialects into a standardized, written form and the creation of school textbooks for Tamazight instruc- tion. By the fall of 2003, Tamazight began to be taught as a three-hour weekly compulsory class for all students in a limited number of elemen- tary schools. The plan was for every elementary school to incorporate Tamazight into its curriculum by 2010. Nevertheless, the actual imple- mentation of Tamazight education on the ground deeply frustrated the activists and invalidated the plan. Experts at IRCAM complained about the Ministry of Education’s lack of willingness and foot-dragging in coop- erating with IRCAM to expand and increase the quality of Tamazight edu- cation. They called attention to the lack of adequate training for teachers, the refusal of some school directors to incorporate Tamazight into their school curriculum, and the reluctance of educational inspectors to address problems with the teachers and school directors.18

IRCAM employees also underlined that they encountered similar resis- tance from within the ranks of the Ministry of Communication to increase the visibility of Amazigh culture and language in the media domain. They attributed the constant delay in establishing a separate Amazigh TV channel to the lack of political will within the ministry. A state-funded Amazigh TV channel was finally launched in January 2010 after intense lobbying efforts by Amazigh activists.19 The gradual official recognition of Berber culture and identity has not been a smooth and painless pro- cess. The bureaucratic foot-dragging has demonstrated that bureaucracies may not be effective institutions in decision-making processes but that they may enjoy considerable influence over policy making by bending and reshaping policies at the implementation level.

ConCluSion

This study on Berber activism and the Moroccan state calls attention away from state-centric analyses of policy change in authoritarian contexts, to underline an ethnic movement’s capabilities in affecting policy. The strate- gies were constructed to assure the state’s center of power that Amazigh demands were of a nonthreatening nature and indicated the movement’s willingness to conciliate in return for political reform. The activists’ strate- gies were in line with Moroccan political traditions and were formulated based on specific expectations about the monarch’s behavior vis-à-vis emerging challenges to his conventional policies. Previous acts of selec-

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tive co-optation of different social movements by the palace set impor- tant precedents in determining the boundaries of legitimate action for the Amazigh activists.

The establishment of IRCAM, however, does not seem to have made the Amazigh activists, some of whom accepted employment in this state institution, passive and obedient subjects acting as a mere extension of the makhzen. Instead, they seek to mold official practices to promote Berber language and culture. As one activist working at IRCAM explained why she decided to join IRCAM:

There are always extremist associations who tell us that nothing can be done with the state, that if you work with the state, they will benefit from it but not us. We told them that we took up our arms and joined the insti- tute just like militants, that we will struggle from inside the institute. It is not only the state that automatically benefits from this process; we can benefit too. The youth started to accuse us of selling out Tamazight and all that. I reply to them by saying, “Give me another solution,” and they propose nothing. If you stay outside the system, others will always make decisions for you. By working within the system, you know that one day you will decide.20

Although the language-policy changes proceed slowly and with conten- tion on the ground, IRCAM plays an important role in constructing a new idea of Berberness. As IRCAM activists conduct research, publish books, and organize conferences, they write a new Berber history, redefine Berber traditions, and fashion a new Berber imagery. Through these activities, they challenge the prevailing notions of Berberness in Moroccan society. Although its effects are yet highly uncertain, the newly enacted constitu- tion of Morocco recognizes Tamazight as an official language and under- lines Morocco’s ethnically plural character (Bakri and Goodman 2003). The new constitution owes its existence to the pro-democratic demonstra- tions in Morocco that were part of the Arab Spring, and Amazigh activists have been active participants in such demonstrations. Only time will show to what extent the new constitution will lead to concrete policy changes on the ground, but the activists’ awareness of the standard makhzenian strategy of co-optation indicates that the Amazigh movement’s influence on the redefinition of Moroccan identity could be much greater than what was originally intended.

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notES 1 Berber activists refuse to use the word Berber because of its pejorative roots in

the word barbarian. Instead, they refer to themselves as Amazigh, meaning “free men.” Here the term Amazigh will be used while referring to Berber activism. According to estimates, 40-45 percent of the Moroccan population speaks one of the three Berber dialects. For more on Berber activism, see Maddy-Weitzman 2011.

2 Le Matin du Sahara et du Maghreb 2001. 3 Examples are McCann 1994; Gamson 1990; and Giugni, McAdam, and Tilly 1999. 4 For a discussion of Arabization policies and some examples of official restrictions

that Amazigh activists were subject to, see Aslan 2008. 5 For more on human rights reforms and political changes in Morocco during the

1990s, see Waltz 1995, A. Mayer 1993-94, Denoeux and Maghraoui 1998, and Laya- chi 1998.

6 Tamazight is one of the three varieties of Berber dialects and is spoken in the Middle Atlas region. With the efforts of standardization, Tamazight came to mean the standardized version of the Berber language that unites all three variants. Part of the Agadir Charter may be found in the appendix of Rachik 2006, 237-41. The demands of the charter are given in Aboulkacem 2005, 409.

7 The manifesto’s demands were constitutional recognition of Tamazight, planning for the economic development of the Amazigh population, teaching of Tamazight in schools, revision of the national history presented in schools, provision of translators in Tamazight in courts and administration, TV and radio broadcast- ing in Tamazight, state support for Amazigh arts, and financial assistance to Amazigh associations and publications. For a very good analysis of the manifesto, see Maddy-Weitzman 2007.

8 “The Berber (Amazigh) Manifesto,” trans. Jilali Saib, March 1, 2000, Amazigh World, http://www.amazighworld.net/human_rights/morocco/manifesto2000. php.

9 There has been an ongoing tension between the Islamists and the Amazigh activ- ists in Morocco. For instance, the main Islamist party, the Party of Justice and Development, opposes the recognition of Tamazight and considers the revival of the Tifinagh alphabet as a blasphemy. Many Islamists see the Amazigh move- ment as an imperialist project aiming to divide the Muslim peoples. For more, see Maddy-Weitzman 2001, 2006.

10 A total of twenty-four interviews were conducted with Amazigh activists by the author in Rabat between October 2006 and March 2007. Due to the sensitivity of the topic, the names of the interviewees are not reported.

11 Makhzen is the traditional name of the central government in Morocco. Literally, it means “storehouse,” denoting a place where the collected taxes were kept.

12 For a brief discussion of how Moroccan kings portray themselves to their public, see Waterbury 1970, 150.

13 For more on different consultative bodies created by the monarchy to address the demands of new social movements in the 1990s and the limited capacity of these

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consultative bodies, see A. Mayer 1993-94, Denoeux and Maghraoui 1998, and Sater 2007.

14 An account of this process can be found in Alami, Brousky, and Alaoui 2004. See also Benchemsi 2001.

15 Today IRCAM employs about three hundred people. Of those, one hundred are permanent employees and two hundred are contract employees. Their salaries and working conditions are noticeably superior to those of state employees at compa- rable levels. For more, see Boukhari 2005, 9.

16 Amazigh activist, interviewed by the author, Rabat, November 2006. 17 The full text of the law can be found in Bulletin Officiel, no. 4428 (November 7,

1996), 735. The entire collection of the Bulletin Officiel, from 1912 onward, can be retrieved online, through the website of the Secretariat General of the Govern- ment, http://www.sgg.gov.ma/historique_bo.aspx?id=982.

18 IRCAM employees, interviewed by the author, Rabat, January 2007. For more on the problems associated with Tamazight teaching in Morocco, see Errihani 2006 and Buckner 2006.

19 “Morocco Launches First Amazigh TV Channel,” January 11, 2010, http://www. agraw.com/2010/01/morocco-launches-amazigh-tv-channel.

20 IRCAM employee, interviewed by the author, Rabat, November 2006 (author’s translation).

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Challenging the Practice of the State, but Beholden to Its Image

Women’s Activists, Academics, and the Public Take on Egypt’s Citizenship Laws

PAmElA J. StumPo

Pressure on regimes to wrestle with the issue of citizenship seems to be mounting throughout countries in the Middle East, despite the fact that these countries have different forms of governments and varying levels of wealth. Issues related to citizenship have recently risen to the top of the public agenda in three different regimes: Egypt, Kuwait, and Jordan. After almost thirty years of inactivity in the area of citizenship law, political actors in each of these countries are challenging state policies that grant citizenship rights according to certain conceptions of blood ties. An important way of opening a new window into the everyday life of these political actors is to decenter the state in order to understand struggles over citizenship laws and, at the same time, to examine how the state is simultaneously ever present. Actors who are reformulating citizenship law are expressing preferences in a way that is strongly influenced by modern, state-centric conceptions of citizenship. In other words, the ancient and fundamental sense of belonging generated by blood ties has become inex- tricably linked with the distinctly modern idea of citizenship granted by the state. One example of this trend is the Egyptian case, where in 2003 a

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prominent change in citizenship law served to redefine the relationship between blood ties and Egyptian citizenship. Not only is the Egyptian case important and interesting in itself, but it also sheds light on the changes in citizenship law across the Middle East.

The relationship between citizenship and blood ties in Egypt is exam- ined using Joel S. Migdal’s state-in-society approach. Migdal’s approach is particularly useful for addressing this relationship for two reasons. First, as previously mentioned, it prompts us to decenter our analysis. Instead of simply focusing on the Mubarak regime’s statements about the new citi- zenship law, it allows us to emphasize the societal agency that spearheaded the struggle for this change. In looking at the process by which citizen- ship laws were changed in practice, we can see how Egyptian actors were able to reshape one aspect of state authority—for instance, the lobbying of elite activists, academics, and the general public. Yet, at the same time, this approach cautions against losing sight of state authority all together. It does this by encouraging us to distinguish between the practices and image of the Egyptian state, a distinction that is especially important to make when attempting to explain the complex fusion of state policy, blood ties, and modern conceptions of citizenship. It allows us to understand that while the Egyptian state has sought to project the image of a modern, egalitarian state granting basic rights to its citizens, in practice it has often divided the Egyptian population through highly exclusionary citizenship laws based on certain bloodlines. It also allows us to see that although those groupings excluded by their bloodline have attempted to challenge these iniquitous state practices, they have not attempted to undermine the image of the Egyptian state. For they have sought to reconcile their blood- line with modern citizenship laws, thereby trying to tie in their blood- based boundaries of belonging with the image of the modern Egyptian state. This state-in-society approach to citizenship differs from most previ- ous studies of citizenship that, although highly valuable, have focused on conflicts over citizenship when newcomers seek rights and privileges in their host countries, even when denied formal citizenship, and therefore fail to comprehend the complex historical interplay between bloodline and citizenship (see Brubaker 1989; Hammar 1990; and Soysal 1995).

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rEdEfining thE Polity

Law No. 26 of 1975

For most of Egypt’s modern history, the children of Egyptian women and non-Egyptian men were denied citizenship by the government in accor- dance with the People’s Assembly and Law No. 26, which was passed in May 1975 and established the guidelines for who could be considered Egyptian (Government of Egypt 1975). In general, the law allowed people who had lived continuously in Egypt between 1914 and 1975, and people who were considered Egyptian as of 1958, to enjoy Egyptian citizenship. Article 2 of this law specifically allowed people who were “born of Egyptian fathers,” “born in Egypt of an Egyptian mother, and a father whose nationality is unknown or who is stateless,” “born in Egypt, of an Egyptian mother but their kinship to the father has not been proved legally,” and “born in Egypt of unknown parents” to enjoy Egyptian nationality. Article 3 allowed per- sons who were born abroad “of an Egyptian mother, and of an unknown father or stateless father, or a father whose nationality is unknown” to be considered Egyptian. This complex definition left out children “born in Egypt, of an Egyptian mother and a father whose nationality is known.”

There were a number of categories of people who had Egyptian mothers and foreign fathers and were excluded from citizenship rights on the basis of the paradigm where nationality could be passed only through the father. Many of these people were the children of women who lived in poorer districts and who had essentially been sold into marriage to wealthy men from the Gulf by their families. These marriages are often referred to as “summer marriages” because when the man pays a young woman’s family a dowry for her hand in marriage, it is understood by both parties that the marriage will only last for a brief period, usually for the summer.

There is a stigma attached to these types of marriages, which makes it difficult to obtain statistics about them. However, the phenomenon has been studied by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). For example, the New Women Foundation conducted a study about paternity issues in Egypt that discussed summer marriages and the problems that children from these marriages experience, including the lack of citizenship rights, stating, “There are villages of Giza province that are famous for marrying their young females with Gulf men.” The report also demonstrated that Gulf men were the most common defendants in paternity cases brought to

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court by Egyptian women, suggesting that summer marriages were com- mon in certain parts of the country (Lotfy 2006). These paternity lawsuits and the corresponding discussion of the summer marriage problem by this NGO (as well as other NGOs), point to a new type of human traf- ficking between poor Egyptian families and wealthy Arab men. The chil- dren who resulted from these arrangements were one population that was excluded from nationality through the paradigm that granted citizenship solely through the father’s bloodline.

The children of summer marriages, however, were not the only group that suffered before state policy regarding citizenship was changed. There are many circumstances where foreign men reside permanently in Egypt, marry local women, and produce children. Statistics about these groups are also difficult to obtain. An expert on one such population of migrants residing in Egypt—the Sudanese—noted that numbers cited for that com- munity range from 5 million to two hundred thousand, although mar- riages between Egyptians and Sudanese are known to be widespread (Fábos 2011, 15). Marriages between other migrant communities and Egyptians have also increased. In researching another such group, Oroub el-Abed commented on this phenomenon. She wrote that “intermarriage has vastly increased in the last decades” and argued that intermarriage between Palestinians and Egyptians has become “extremely widespread” (el-Abed 2009, 69).

Sudanese and Palestinians are not the only groups of migrants who intermarried with locals, however. Increased travel, migration, and even- tually intermarriage came with increased globalization. An analysis of the children produced from intermarriages between Egyptian women and men from places as diverse as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Europe, and the United States highlights the importance of Migdal’s emphasis on digging below the surface and discovering the real processes at work in state-soci- ety relations. Furthermore, in addition to those actors who pushed for the change in state policy, it is also possible to find groups of individuals who had technically acquired the right to obtain citizenship but were repeat- edly shunned by bureaucrats. These bureaucrats were intentionally creat- ing obstacles, based on physical characteristics, daily practices, or father’s country of origin, with the hope of delaying paperwork past filing dates. Other scholars have verified this finding (el-Abed 2009). By decentering state authority, Migdal’s work helps us understand how the new citizen- ship law was challenged in practice. Migdal (2004) uses the phrase “virtual

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checkpoints” to refer to the markers that keep these individuals and others from crossing the boundary that would allow them to obtain citizenship.

Before the law was changed, all the children of Egyptian mothers and foreign fathers regardless of their father’s country of origin, that is, children who were born and for the most part raised in Egypt, experi- enced a number of hardships because of discriminatory state policy. For instance, even if these children were able to obtain citizenship rights from their father’s home country, they were still forced to live as foreigners in Egypt. As “foreign” residents of Egypt, they were required to pay expen- sive school fees and tuition in foreign currency. They were barred from government jobs. Men with foreign fathers in Egypt faced a stigma in find- ing a marriage partner because families do not want their daughters to produce children without Egyptian citizenship. This segment of the Egyp- tian population faced even more difficulties if they were unable to obtain citizenship rights from their father’s home country. They were left without passports, could not leave the country, and were unable to enroll in college. They were often subject to mistreatment at work. If they were able to gain employment, they would only be granted an unofficial job, as a favor from their employers.

Furthermore, the impact of this disparate treatment—the denial of citizenship rights—was most dramatic among Egypt’s poor. As mentioned above, the children from “summer marriages” lived in the poorest dis- tricts and were often abandoned in Egypt by their foreign fathers. Lacking citizenship to any country, including Egypt, these children of Egyptian women and non-Egyptian men were essentially stateless. Without official papers, they were not allowed to enroll in school or receive even minimal health care.

Eventually, the hardships of such people even became a topic on tele- vision and talk radio. During a radio show called Aʿla Nasia (translated as On the Corner), one woman recounted how her young son dreamed of joining the military with his friends. Despondent that his dreams would never be realized, she asked in tears, “How do I tell him he is not Egyptian [and thus is forbidden from joining the military]?” ( Aʿla Nasia 2001).

These examples are representative of the problems faced by the children of Egyptian mothers and foreign fathers. These and similar problems date back to when Egypt ceased being part of the Ottoman Empire and was granted the right to define its polity and establish its own requirements for citizenship (Egyptian Organization for Human Rights 2004). It would

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take nearly eighty years for Egypt’s prerevolutionary leaders (first its presi- dent and then the People’s Assembly) to address this situation. In the fall of 2003, President Hosni Mubarak issued a presidential decree instructing the Ministry of the Interior to accept petitions for citizenship in a number of these cases. Several months later, in July 2004, the People’s Assembly passed legislation amending the country’s citizenship laws. With these changes—in theory—the regime expanded the polity on the basis of a new conception of who belonged, granting citizenship rights to a large number of people who had previously been left out of the polity. Using Migdal’s approach to investigate this change in state policy encourages us to look beyond this legal amendment and analyze the process by which actors transformed the relationship between state and society, while at the same time remaining beholden to the predominant image of the state as one where membership was determined by bloodline.

Changing the Law (the 2003 Presidential Decree and 2004 Amendment)

This change in the practice of granting citizenship rights amounted to a significant reshaping of state policy. Just one year after the Egyptian weekly Al-Usbu’a described the nationality law as a “minefield” the ruling regime would never touch, Gamal Mubarak, chair of the ruling National Demo- cratic Party (NDP) Policy Committee and potential successor to his father at the time, signaled a major shift in the regime’s policy toward nationality by reviewing a paper titled “The Rights of Citizenship and Democracy” on the floor of the NDP’s annual party congress in October 2003. Gamal Mubarak argued that this paper was based on the fundamental principles of the party (ArabicNews.com 2003).

President Mubarak used his keynote address at the closing session of the same party congress to announce that one of the party’s new slogans would be “Citizenship Rights First” (Nkrumah 2003). In an abrupt rever- sal of earlier policy, Gamal Mubarak announced the regime’s plans to amend the nationality law to allow individuals born to Egyptian mothers and non-Egyptian fathers to become Egyptian citizens.

After the party congress in the fall of 2003, President Mubarak issued a decree instructing the Ministry of the Interior to accept applications for citizenship from the children of Egyptian mothers and foreign fathers. At the same time, he instructed the People’s Assembly to begin drafting legis- lation that would codify this change. In July 2004, after several months of

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debate, the People’s Assembly passed Law No. 154 (Government of Egypt 2004), amending certain provisions of Law No. 26.

This policy marked a radical shift on the part of the Mubarak regime and a major challenge to state policy by the social forces and organs of the state that had mobilized behind the issue. Those individuals whose Egyptian bloodline is based solely on their mother’s side of the family were now eligible to become part of the Egyptian polity. This apparently sudden and dramatic change in policy is the source of two important questions: Why did the Mubarak regime suddenly decide to sanction changes in the citizenship law that it had once so forcefully opposed? What caused the Mubarak regime to broaden its notion of the Egyptian polity in this way?

SoCiAl forCES ChAllEngE thE Pr ACtiCE of thE StAtE but rEmAin bEholdEn to itS imAgE

Elite Women’s Activists

Before the law was changed, a large number of NGOs were galvanized around the issue. These NGOs, led by a group of elite women’s activists, argued against this denial of citizenship rights. They demanded that the state’s policy of granting citizenship on the basis of blood ties be adjusted to include blood ties stemming from an individual’s mother, in addition to his or her father. However, the image of the Egyptian state remained important for these activists. The older notion of blood ties remained criti- cal for them, but it was updated and fused with a modern state-centric, albeit more progressive and equality oriented, notion of citizenship.

A broad range of groups pressed for this change—from those that were closely allied with and sometimes part of the Mubarak regime to those that were not. A number of NGOs demanding increased rights for women devoted considerable resources to change the practice of the state and expand its citizenship policies to include blood ties to mothers. Twenty- two women’s organizations as diverse as the New Women Foundation, a vocally progressive left-wing organization, and the National Committee for Population and Development (NCPD), which was created by two min- isterial decrees in 1995 and 1996, participated in writing a report calling for a change in the Egyptian nationality law. An additional eighty-three women’s organizations signed the report (New Women Foundation 2000).

According to Maha M. Abdelrahman (2004), the prerevolutionary

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Egyptian government had a tight grip on NGOs since the 1950s. Some, although not all, of the NGOs pushing for more inclusive citizenship rights were created by and therefore closely linked with the regime. For exam- ple, President Mubarak appointed Egypt’s first lady, Suzanne Mubarak, as president of the National Council for Women (NCW). She was also asked to serve as a technical advisor to the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), and Ambassador Mervat Tallawy was appointed its secretary-general. Suzanne Mubarak personally supported the change in the law and was heavily involved in the campaign. These organizations made amending citizenship laws in Egypt to include blood ties to mothers one of their highest priorities. These state-linked NGOs and their push for a change in the state’s practice regarding citizenship laws is a clear example of the porous boundary between state and society. These groups were themselves organs of the state because they were so closely tied to the regime. Yet in taking up Migdal’s (1994: 15) call for “an anthropology of the state,” it becomes clear that although they were part of the state, these groups engaged in a process that fundamentally challenged a long- standing state policy.

These organizations and organs of the state poured resources into pressure on the regime and the corresponding challenge to state policy through their elite connections. The NCW formed a joint committee with the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice in order to elimi- nate discrimination against women. They began to hold conferences, pub- lish reports, and wage a media campaign to raise public awareness about the fact that the state’s practice of granting citizenship according to blood ties left out blood ties to Egyptian mothers. In 1994, the NCCM held a con- ference titled “Egyptian Women and the Challenges of the Twenty-First Century,” cosponsored by the Council of Ministers. In March 2000, the NCW held a conference focused on the issue, titled “The Renaissance of Egypt: Women, Citizenry,” where Mubarak was invited to speak.

They also began collecting and publishing for public consumption data on the number of children affected by their lack of citizenship rights. The NCW established a documentation center and funded ombudswomen to manage a hotline for Egyptian women seeking legal advice. Shortly before the law was changed in Egypt, the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR) published statistics claiming that between 150,000 and nearly 1 million children in Egypt were affected by their inability to receive citizen- ship rights through their mothers (Leila 2004).

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Other more progressive NGOs, which were not tied to the regime and were not organs of the state, used the campaign for their own purposes and were involved in challenging state authority on this issue. The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) published a report on stateless children right before the amendment was passed, demanding citizenship rights for these children and noting their even more precarious position in an increasingly globalized world.

The previously mentioned New Women Foundation was also involved in conferences and media campaigns and produced a short film about the subject. One of its staff members devoted all of her time for a period of nine to ten months to the report referenced above, which discussed the issue of “summer marriages” (Lotfy 2006).

Whether tied to the regime or not, all of the elite activists challenged the Egyptian state’s practice of granting citizenship rights, but they remained attached to its image. For they did not call for the granting of citizenship rights through some other category such as employment or immigration, which would have introduced an entirely new concept of what it would mean to be a member of the Egyptian state. Instead, they asked for an updated and modernized version of the traditional image of the state—one created through bloodline and inheritance of citizenship rights.

Academics

Not only were these activist lawyers making arguments in the press aimed at changing the practice of the Egyptian state while keeping its image intact with regard to citizenship rights, but academics were also making similar arguments. Abu al-ʿAla ʿAli Abu al-ʿAla al-Nimr (1997) published a book titled The Nationality of the Children of Egyptian Mothers, in which he argued that citizenship should be granted through the mothers, as well as the fathers, in Egypt. The author cited the children of Egyptian women who married Syrian men when the two countries were unified between 1958 and 1961 and the children of Egyptian women and Sudanese men before Sudan’s independence. In both cases, the children were considered foreigners.

Abu al-ʿAla al-Nimr also bought into the prevailing mental map of the Egyptian state. He based his argument on the notion that citizenship should be granted through inheritance of rights on the basis of bloodline. Yet he argued that there is an incongruity between a women’s inability to

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pass nationality on to her children and the fact that the Egyptian Consti- tution states that men and women have “equal duties and equal rights.” Therefore, the state’s practices in granting citizenship rights, not its image, should be equalized.

Other academics spoke about the relationship between Islamic law and nationality, mostly advocating for the expansion of citizenship rights. Although these intellectuals were coming from a point of view different from that of the more secular NGO activists, most of them challenged not the image of the state but only its practice of granting citizenship rights. One such intellectual, Zeinab Radwan, a dean at Cairo University, deputy chairperson of the NCW’s legislative committee, and People’s Assembly member, argued that nationality is not addressed by the Sharia (Islamic law) but that, instead, “nationality is an issue to be tackled by temporal laws” (quoted in Sakr 2001).

The Public

Although the movement for creating more inclusive policies for the chil- dren of Egyptian women and foreign men began with elite activists, these arguments eventually made their way into Egyptian public discourse, as evidenced by the radio interviews on Aʿla Nasia referenced earlier. Letters to the editor in the local newspapers began to show up, in which the prac- tice of the state in granting citizenship rights was questioned. These letters called for citizenship rights for the children of Egyptian women married to foreign men.

Much of the public discourse among the general public on contro- versies over citizenship contains references to a concern with “Egyptian blood” and asserts that Egyptian lineage (either through the mother or the father) provides children with a right to citizenship that they were being denied before the new law was passed. Thus, Migdal’s approach to the state helps us understand that while the state authority’s practice of granting citizenship on the basis of paternity was being challenged, the traditional image of the state as one based on bloodline was an important part of the Egyptian political psyche. For example, in a 2003 letter to Al-Ahram, one Egyptian mother—representative of this group of aggrieved women—con- trasted the importance of maternal bloodline in inheritance law with the primacy of the paternal bloodline in acquiring nationality. She pleaded for citizenship for her children, writing that “these children do not possess

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what they deserve . . . achieving the Egyptian nationality is a right, not a duty.” She points out how “even a Buddhist or someone from Mars” could obtain the nationality if they have an Egyptian father, while these children of Egyptian descent could not. In arguing that families affected by this conundrum “swing between hope and despair,” she asserted her image of the Egyptian state as one that was still based on bloodline, while question- ing its practice of granting citizenship (Baraka 2003).

Other members of the public adopted this theme as well. They were beholden to the same image of the state—one based on bloodline—while at the same time questioning the validity of its practice of granting citi- zenship only on the basis of paternity. They made this argument by focus- ing on the unfair situations that those individuals with Egyptian blood on their mother’s side found themselves in. For example, one mother in a mixed marriage wrote to Al-Ahram with feelings of “ghurba” (loneliness or despair) and detailed how her son was forced to move to the Sudan, despite the civil war there—a country he has never known and where he knows no one and he is a complete stranger—because he could not find work in Egypt after his Sudanese father died (Anonymous 2000).

One grandfather wrote to Al-Ahram about the awful predicament his grandchildren were in because of their lack of citizenship rights, which was unfair because of their Egyptian blood. He included with his letter a pic- ture of his four grandsons as small children, despite the fact that they had grown into teenagers and adults. When their Egyptian mother died, their Lebanese father abandoned them in his care. One son was in law school in Egypt, using his grandfather’s pension to pay the foreigner rate for tuition, knowing that he would be unable to repay him. Another son had moved away from his family, to the Emirates, in order to work, because without citizenship rights he was unable to find a job in Egypt (al-Basil 1999).

Several stories also focused on adults who were still living with the ramifications of their lack of Egyptian citizenship. For example, one article described a young woman who was up for an academic job at an Egyptian university but was not hired because she lacked citizenship. The same arti- cle also talked about three young adults living without citizenship because their German father passed away in the Emirates the night before he was planning on applying for their German passports (Abdel Hameed 2002).

Numerous photographs of children without citizenship rights—simi- lar to the grandfather’s submission to Al-Ahram—were sent to newspapers and magazines and given captions such as “Born and raised in Egypt, but

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not Egyptian” (quoted in Bahgat 2001) and “Egyptian except for citizen- ship!” These stories focus on the children’s understanding of and mem- bership in Egyptian society and their ability to speak Egyptian Arabic (al-Damrani 2002). By using virtual checkpoints like native speaking ability as arguments for inclusion in the polity, these authors remained attached to an image of the state based on bloodline, while questioning its practice of considering only paternal bloodline.

Although Al-Ahram was Egypt’s most commonly read newspaper, it was also state controlled. The issue of citizenship and the boundaries sur- rounding the image of the state, however, was also rising to the top of the agenda in opposition newspapers. This is evidenced by the hundreds of headlines from those papers addressing the subject, headlines that main- tained an image of the state based on bloodline but argued that the state practice of granting citizenship should be made more inclusive of women’s blood ties to the country, as in the following: “The Nationality Law Does Not Know Zeinab” (Muntasr 2002) and “Nationality Is the Women’s Cem- etery” (al-Ga’ra 2003).

In reference to marriage with foreign men Al-Wafd carried a story titled “An Injustice for the Women of the Nation” (Sarhan 2000). Al-Akhbar ran a story about the issue, titled “Prohibitive Conditions Cut off Women from Their Rights . . . Why?” (Mukhtar 2002). In May 2003, Al-Ahrar ran a story titled “Banning Citizenship for the Sons of Egyptian Mothers Is Unconsti- tutional” (al-Nibrawī 2003).

Journalists writing for opposition papers devoted just as much time and space in these papers to the citizenship issue as the state-run news- papers did. Magdi Sarhan wrote a long opinion piece on the issue for the opposition Al-Wafd newspaper. He asked, “Why would we deprive women of the same privileges and rights given to men?” (Sarhan 2000). Similar to authors writing for the state-run papers, authors in these papers also sup- ported the traditional image of the state as one based on bloodline, while they questioned its practice of granting citizenship only on the basis of paternal bloodlines.

The topic of citizenship rights was not only on Sarhan’s agenda, how- ever, but also on the minds of other reporters for Al-Wafd and all the other opposition papers. Another columnist for Al-Wafd also criticized the prac- tice—but not the image—of the Egyptian state. In fact, the image of the Egyptian state, as one where citizenship rights are inherited through blood ties, was so strong in this columnist’s mind that it was held up in the face

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of the threat of Zionism. This Al-Wafd writer pointed out the inefficient (and to him, hypocritical) policy of granting citizenship to the children of Egyptian men and Israeli women and not granting it to the children of Egyptian women and foreign men. Yet he did not challenge the basis of granting citizenship rights according to bloodline (al-Basīr 2002).

The leftist Sout al-Ouma also covered the issue in depth. One colum- nist, Saher al-Ga’ra (2003), wrote about a fictional Egyptian woman “who married a Palestinian man. . . . She is the daughter of a country that gives the Arab brothers the Egyptian nationality . . . while it is being cruel with it for its own sons and daughters.”

Despite the apparent success of elite women’s activists, academics, and the general public in changing the status of children of Egyptian moth- ers and non-Egyptian fathers, this adjustment in the contours of Egyptian citizenship rights is not a simple story. It cannot be neatly described as one set of boundaries (blood ties to fathers only) being replaced by another set of boundaries (blood ties to mothers and fathers) within the image of the state. Rather, images of the state and the mental maps and boundaries that go along with them are constantly changing and are always fluid. When one set of boundaries (in this case, the boundaries associated with the image of the Egyptian state) changes, others are put in flux as well. Migdal (2004, 11) makes note of this occurrence when he writes, “For social sci- entists, it is probably preferable to think of the normal state of boundaries as in flux, rather than as permanent or semi-permanent, when trying to understand the configuration of human space.”

nArroWing thE Polity

It has now been illustrated that the practices of the state have excluded certain bloodlines from the notions of citizenship enshrined in the image of the state and that these excluded groups have challenged these practices so as to align their exiled bloodlines with this image of the state, in the process gaining citizenship to the Egyptian state and accruing the benefits that follow. However, it is interesting to note that the opposite process can simultaneously occur. That is, while the practices of the state can serve to align certain bloodlines with the image of the state, these practices can also misalign other bloodlines with the image, thereby creating new cat- egories of exclusion. This is the case with dual nationality.

In 2001, only two years before the nationality law was changed and

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when women’s NGOs had already been mobilized in their effort to change the law, a court decision forced a number of parliament members to give up their seats because it was discovered that they held two passports (el-Din 2001). In defining citizenship, the courts said that it was a bond between an individual and the state whose citizenship he carried and to which he bore loyalty. Consequently, the court added, a person with citizenship ties to two countries has divided loyalties. Furthermore, the court argued that a person who insisted on keeping a nationality besides his or her Egyptian one lacked full loyalty to Egypt (Howeidy 2001).

Although by July 2004 the state was willing to extend some rights and privileges to the children of Egyptian mothers and foreign fathers, the loyalty of public officials who were rumored to hold dual citizenship continued to be publicly questioned and some were “exposed” for having two passports. This illustrates an overt nonacceptance of people in Egypt who hold citizenship rights in two countries and a public discourse cen- tered on this idea. For example, an article in the Islamist weekly newspa- per Al-Ahrar titled “A Government of Foreigners” attacked many newly appointed cabinet ministers, including the prime minister himself, for holding dual and possibly triple nationalities (Al-Ahrar article described in Nkrumah 2004).

In addition to journalists and the public, many academics also focused on this new category of exclusion by expressing their fears of dual nation- als. In 2000, a constitutional law professor, Dr. Ibrahim Darwīsh, in an interview with the newspaper Al-Akhbar expressed his fear of dual nation- als, arguing that “dual citizenship means dual loyalty.” In Darwīsh’s mind, if a citizen were content with his first citizenship and “had complete loyalty to this Egyptian citizenship, he wouldn’t have tried to get a second citizen- ship,” and, according to the professor, seeking a second citizenship means that this individual “has lost trust in his country” (I. Darwīsh 2000).

Abu al-ʿAla al-Nimr also came out strongly against dual nationality, arguing that dual nationality created too much confusion because an indi- vidual was subject to two sets of laws. He wrote that dual nationality “sym- bolizes the loyalty, love and respect the individual has towards his country . . . it is the same like having two mothers, an individual could not have two mothers in love, honor and respect” (Abu al-ʿAla al-Nimr 1997).

The timing of the broadening of the Egyptian polity, on the one hand (with the expansion of citizenship rights), and the rise in opposition to dual nationals, on the other, is not a coincidence. As the boundaries of the

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state’s practices regarding citizenship rights were questioned in one area, they were being questioned in another as well. In any case, regardless of whether or not they were discussing the broadening or narrowing of the Egyptian polity through citizenship rights, the state’s practices in granting citizenship rights suddenly seemed to be on the minds of academics, as well as women’s rights activists. The image of the state, however, as a place where people are granted citizenship rights on the basis of blood ties was not called into question. Rather, the nature of the blood ties that allowed entry into the state was questioned instead.

The Egyptian public’s mental map of the state was shifting in many ways. Just as with their academic counterparts, the dislike of dual nationals was widespread and entered public discourse as well. The perceived injus- tice (and fear) that the child of an Egyptian father and an Israeli mother could hold both Egyptian and Israeli nationality under the current laws, while the child of two Arab parents might not be able to acquire Egyptian nationality, was cited repeatedly in letters to the editor and news articles.

ConCluSion

Although different social groups, namely, women’s activists, intellectuals, and the Egyptian public, called for a change in the state’s practice of grant- ing citizenship rights and succeeded in effecting that change, the image of the state was still a critical part of the Egyptian political psyche. Apply- ing the state-in-society approach to the Egyptian case opens new windows into why the modern state survives in the face of inefficiency in its prac- tices, challenges to those practices, and globalization.

In Egypt, blood ties merged with a modern state-centric notion of citi- zenship. The blood-centered “mental map” that dictated who belonged to the Egyptian state became intertwined with state-centered boundaries of belonging or “mental maps.” On the basis of this analysis, the state-in-soci- ety approach can be used to investigate similar struggles over the practice of granting citizenship rights throughout the Middle East in cases such as Kuwait and Jordan. Both countries experienced similar calls to change the practice of granting citizenship rights in the early 2000s. Both of these countries also featured public discussions on dual nationality.

In Kuwait, controversies centered on one group of individuals without citizenship rights who are referred to as bidoon (translated from Arabic as “without”). Some estimates place the number of bidoon at 120,000. Kuwait

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has experienced this phenomenon because a large population of Bedou- ins from the northern Arabian Peninsula settled in Kuwait before 1920. These people moved to Kuwait after the current state boundaries were established. These bidoon are similar to the children of Egyptian women and non-Egyptian men; they have resided mostly in Kuwait their entire lives but have been unable to receive citizenship rights (in the case of the bidoon, it is because either they or their ancestors moved to Kuwait after 1920). Kuwait has experienced a public struggle similar to the one in Egypt over its practice of granting citizenship rights. Despite many other limita- tions placed on bidoon applications for citizenship, the government did agree in 2001 to grant citizenship to children of Kuwaiti widows or divor- cees who had been married to bidoon men (U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants 2003).

A similar debate questioning the state’s practice in granting citizenship rights to the children of native women married to foreign men occurred in Jordan. In fact, Jordan’s Queen Ranya was an outspoken leader in the movement to change Jordan’s citizenship laws. In 2002, the government announced that it would consider amending the citizenship law to grant women equal rights in passing on their Jordanian citizenship. However, a group of lawmakers, fearing Palestinian access to Jordanian citizenship, put an end to the possibility. Applying Migdal’s state-in-society approach will help us better understand not only the three cases mentioned in this chapter but also others throughout the Middle East.

notE Some of the material in this chapter is drawn from Pamela J. Stumpo (2012), “Citi-

zenship Talk and the Challenge to Authoritarianism in Mubarak’s Egypt,” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

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