From Theocracy to Democracy? Towards Secularisation and Individualisation in the Policy of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan

Abstract

There is a common assumption that ‘Islam’ has an inherent opposition between the sacred and the secular which obstructs the secularisation process witnessed in western societies. This study argues that Weber’s notion of Protestant religion as a driving force in the rationalisation of society might be an indicator of how political Islam in itself in the end might lead to a differentiation between the religious and the secular sphere; an individualisation and a secularisation of the Islamic message and thereby to a privatisation of religion. The political experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan is analysed in view of western theories of secularisation, particularly Steve Bruce’s study on secularisation in British society. As Islamists work within the democratic system, there seems to be a transformation from being a radical organisation towards becoming ‘just another comfortable denomination’, as expressed in Bruce’s claim that ‘the sectarian project’ is ‘largely self-defeating’.