Once widely seen as ascendant in the wake of the Arab Spring, Islamism in the Middle East has experienced notable reversals, from the overthrow of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi in 2013 to the downfall of Tunisia's Ennahda movement, which went from running the country to returning to the underground. Among those who adhere to the most extreme interpretations, many leading Salafi jihadists, like the Islamic State, have gone from rise to ruin in the region. But that hardly means the ideals of Islamism — ranging from extremist, hard-line positions to the comparatively more liberal secular interpretations — have vanished, or have no future at all, particularly as the broad ideology evolves in the face of sustained geopolitical pressure. Whether Islamism revives as in the Levant, evolves pragmatically through parties with Islamic values as in Turkey, or changes beyond all recognition remains up in the air.
Islamism Explained
Islamism is a broad concept. It is distinct from the premodern modes of Islamic governance, like that of the early caliphates or the Ottoman Turks, which were essentially religious monarchies in which personalities often dominated doctrine and politics. Islamism emerged in reaction to the emergence of European nationalism, aiming to depersonalize Middle Eastern politics from its kings and shahs, and anchor politics on the principles of what its proponents believed were the true expressions of Islam as a governing force.
Islamism's many camps are linked by a belief that Islam, through the Koran, should provide the guiding principles of government. Beyond that, its similarities break down along regional, ethnic, sectarian, and even personal lines. For Iran, Islamism is defined by the Shiite Twelver doctrine that manifests in the rule of Shi'a jurists. For the Muslim Brotherhood, it is the belief in Sunni Shariah law as the guiding principles by which society should be governed. For jihadists like al Qaeda and the Islamic State, it is the belief in the resurrection of the long-lost caliphate, ruled by Sunnis, fused with strands of totalitarianism borrowed from the West. They differ, and even battle, over how strongly Islam should be integrated into governance, but they do not argue whether Islam should inform such governing models.
Islamism serves a governing need, and its service is a reflection of the unique governing challenges of the states of the Middle East. It did not emerge in a vacuum. Islamism, and the movements that adhere to it, came about when the region's political economies and strategic balances were upended after World War I. Then, the caliphate, an ancient but largely ceremonial office, was abolished with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, creating an ideological vacuum for the Middle East that had not existed since the coming of Islam in the seventh century. This vacuum was swiftly filled with pitches from European ideologies, like nationalism, communism and socialism, whose adherents argued the people of the Middle East could learn from Europe to secure their independence. But the fall of the caliph inspired a backlash, too. Religious Muslims borrowed from European ideologies like supranationalism and fused them with traditional Islamic principles. This produced the modern vein of the broad tent of Islamism, initially through the Muslim Brotherhood, which inspired and splintered and eventually spread out across the region into the myriad of branches that exist today. They have had some successes. Notably, Islamism has ruled Iran since 1979, and Islamists have kept social secularism and aspects of Westernization at bay even in the monarchies and secular republics.
But those same Islamists are facing challenges not only to their model but also to their physical security. Iran may be the paramount example of the triumph of the Islamists, but a combination of Israeli and U.S. military pressure, domestic mismanagement, corruption and international isolation are straining its rulers' claims that their governing principles can provide peace and prosperity. Even before this, Islamism writ large has suffered setbacks. Overthrown in Egypt, suppressed in Jordan, crushed by Iraqi, American and Kurdish forces in the war against Islamic State, Islamists of all stripes are struggling to find legitimacy and a future in a region that confounded them as readily as it did their Pan-Arabist predecessors.
As a team, RANE's Middle East analysts decided to tackle this long-term trend through three different lenses: Islamism as a resurgent force, particularly in the Levant, where it had taken control of Syria; Islamism as a survivor, where it endures and seeks paths back to power within systems that try to curtail it; and Islamism as an adaptive movement, one that swims with the tides to develop into new parties and systems that may functionally have little to do with Islam or Islamism.
Revival: Sunni Islamism in the Levant and Beyond
The Israel-Hamas War, unraveling of the Syrian regime and visible weakening of Iran's regional influence are collectively opening the door for a renewed wave of Sunni Islamism across the Arab world — a trend furthest advanced in the Levant where this trend is furthest along. The ascendancy of Sunni Islamism and its movements in the Middle East ultimately faltered in the past two decades because of several critical factors.
First, internal fragmentation and ideological divides undermined Sunni Islamist governments' ability to function. This has been especially true most recently in Syria, where the new transitional authorities are still struggling to unify the country through appeasing both the Islamists and minority groups like the Druze, Alawites and Christians.
Second, authoritarian forces in Egypt, the Gulf states and, until recently, Bashar al-Assad's regime, launched aggressive counterrevolutionary campaigns. They used state violence, mass arrests and propaganda to delegitimize and dismantle Islamist movements.
Third, the rise of Iran's version of Shiite Islamism — which expanded an existing network of Shiite militias around the region following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and cemented its influence with Hezbollah's strategic victory against Israel in 2006 — effectively confronted and significantly weakened Sunni Islamist forces in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Iran's robust support to proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq and numerous militias aligned with the Syrian regime decisively turned military dynamics against Sunni Islamist factions. These coordinated interventions drastically reduced their material capabilities, as well as territorial and ideological appeal, resulting in strategic setbacks.
Sunni Islamist groups are now, however, benefiting from the immense economic pressure, battlefield losses and declining popularity on Iran's network of proxies. This has reduced Tehran's allies' deterrent force, which had previously constrained Sunni Islamist expansion in places like Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
Sunni Islamist groups are also benefiting from the Gaza conflict. The fight is galvanizing widespread public sympathy for Islamist resistance narratives, offering Sunni Islamist groups — from mainstream political movements to militant offshoots — fresh ideological and operational momentum. This is especially the case now that they have seen opportunities, and how their governments — the likes of Egypt and Jordan — did little for Palestinians (who are mostly Sunnis) being killed in Gaza. In Syria, toppling the Assad regime on December 8, 2024, seems to have given Sunni Islamist movements in the Levant a breather. Sunnis are now more visibly active on social media, in protests and in armed movements in places like Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Secular states' noninterventionism in Gaza has also made Islamists demanding action against Israel more attractive in the region..
This dynamic is perhaps most clearly on display in Lebanon. In Lebanon, the Sunni Islamist group Al-Jama'ah al-Islamiyah has revived its militant Fajr Forces and openly participated in cross-border clashes with Israel — an assertive move that reflects growing confidence and a challenge to Hezbollah's long-standing monopoly over armed resistance. Sunni Islamist politicians are likely to resurge ahead of Lebanon's 2026 parliamentary elections amid a vacuum in the Sunni leadership left by the popular and moderate Future movement under the leadership of Saad al-Hariri. The more these Sunni networks or factions gain in the parliamentary elections, and if Hezbollah continues to keep its arms, the greater the likelihood of intra-Lebanese frictions in the coming years, Sunni-Shiites standoffs, like firefights in towns and villages of contact or mixed populations, as Hezbollah tries to police red lines and the the country's security forces struggle to contain spillovers without inflaming sectarian narratives. Add in porous borders with Syria (smuggling routes, surveillance and potential Syrian intelligence interference along the Beqaa, Tripoli and Akkar, areas in Lebanon where Sunni Islamism recurrently thrives) and a steadily rising tempo of Israel-Lebanon exchanges, and the pathway to localized but intense violence grows over time.
This resurgence in the Levant has already inspired some action even beyond it. In Egypt, the government recently disrupted an alleged plot by the Hasm Movement, a militant faction tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, preparing attacks to test regime vulnerabilities. Similarly, in Jordan, intelligence agencies uncovered what they claimed was a Muslim Brotherhood-linked cell accused of building rockets and drones with training from Lebanon, prompting Amman to outlaw the brotherhood and threaten the dissolution of its political arm.
Whether Sunni Islamism can ride the wave of collapsing state authority, declining Shiite power projection and resurgent popular support to reassert itself as both a political force and a vehicle for resistance, including through violence to become a force capable of sustainable governance or merely trigger new cycles of instability remains to be seen.
Pragmatic Evolution: Turkey's Ruling Party Distances From Its Roots
Across the region, Islamist groups have enjoyed vastly varying fortunes within their respective countries. Some, like Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and affiliated parties, have been weakened by significant security crackdowns and bans. But other parties in Morocco, Jordan and, especially, Turkey have incorporated Islamic values within a conservative policy platform and continue to operate as part of their countries' political systems. Turkey's example, however, shows how parties with religious origins can distance from their roots in a bid to cling to power.
In some countries, Islamist parties that experienced early success at gaining political power after the 2011 Arab Spring were repressed. In Egypt, the 2012 election of Mohamed Morsi of the Freedom and Justice Party, which has strong links to the Muslim Brotherhood, was followed by his ousting and a crackdown on the organization a year later. The repression, backed by Gulf Arab states, saw Egypt and the Gulf countries ban Islamist political movements, designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization and arrest thousands.
Some other parties with Islamic values have managed to pragmatically operate within the confines of their respective countries' political systems by appealing to conservative Muslim voters. These parties, which include Morocco's Justice and Development Party, or PJD, and Jordan's Islamic Action Front, do not necessarily aim for Islam as the governing framework, but rather to implement policies in alignment with Islamic, or at least conservative, values.
These parties have sometimes been constrained by the limits of the monarchical political systems under which they operate. For instance, the Justice and Development Party lost power in the Moroccan parliamentary elections in part due to Morocco's normalizing relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords, a decision driven by the monarchy but implemented by the PJD-controlled government. By contrast, in 2024, the Islamic Action Front gained seats during the Jordanian parliamentary election, but following the ban of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, it distanced itself from the organization. The parties' inability to address popular concerns — such as worsening economic conditions and ties with Israel — within the confines of the political system will likely continue to weaken their political strength over time.
In Turkey, meanwhile, the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has increasingly adopted nationalistic and authoritarian policies and pivoted away from its Islamic roots — and has seen a gradual decline in its power. It lost seats in the 2018 and 2023 parliamentary elections, though it still remains the largest party in Turkey's Grand National Assembly. Its embrace of nationalistic and authoritarian policies to remain in power is indicative of the way these parties' platforms can shift away from their Islamic origins over time in pursuit of continued political viability.
Change Beyond all Recognition: The Future of Islamism?
If there is a third option, perhaps it is dilution and change. Islamism could be reaching its expiration date, and its future may be one of inertia, rather than agency and change. Islamism can be seen as a bid to respond to the failures of Arab nationalism. If so, Islamism's own record is as poor, if not worse, than that of the pan-Arabists. The most successful Middle Eastern states, the Gulf Arabs and, arguably, Turkey, may show that the future of the ideology in the region may be a more traditional model of nationalism, anchored on social conservatism unmoored from internationalist aspirations.
In some ways, the multipolar environment evolving from the post-Cold War single superpower era favors this 19th-century style of ideological evolution back toward nationalism. But it is not the 19th century, and the nationalism of that era, tied to specific territory and entwined with more abstract notions of national honor, prestige, and supremacy, is no longer culturally relevant. The transactionalism now in ascendance does not lend itself to the traditional embodiment of Islamism, which stands on principles more so than on short-term material gain. Those looking to update Islamism to maintain its principles while surviving in the more unstable multipolar world will probably not find a formula in which Islamism, as a guiding force, can survive without compromises that would strip it of its resemblance to its ancestral ideology.
Perhaps the future of some forms of Islamism looks more like Chinese Communism, in which the authoritarian trappings, symbols and personalities of Communism remain, though so devoid of substance that few genuinely think of China as a communist state anymore. In places like Syria, nominally ruled by an Islamist provisional government, this could well be the model — the veneer of Islamism with little of its substance. Once a rebel Islamist group in the al Qaeda vein, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham first broke with the transnational jihadist movement of al Qaeda to become a local jihadist force focused on Syria's own civil war. Now in power, it has shifted again, towards social conservatism and political centralization, but not into the kind of religiously guided state one might expect of their ideological ancestors. Even the leader of HTS, Ahmad al-Sharaa, once went by the name of Ahmed al-Golani as a nom de guerre. That name implied al-Golani sought the recovery of the Golan Heights from Israel. But now, al-Sharaa is exploring security pacts with Israel — if only tepidly — while mollifying Western, and in particular American, skeptics with policies that focus on stability rather than ideology.
This, then, could be the model of more and more Islamists throughout the Middle East. Rather than a strict return to a Pan-Islamic identity, it would be a shift toward nationally focused concerns, with Islamist slogans and overtones but no adherence to an Islamist ideology that compels state behavior. Over time, this model of adaptation will add another layer to the story of regional Islamism as it alters once more into something new.
