The Arab Spring and Islam: Politics, Religion, Culture and the Struggle for Identity

With the popularity of Islamic-based political parties in Tunisia and Egypt, and the announce of the continuation of a sharia law-based Libya, political Islam in some of the Arab Spring countries is it seems regaining momentum, re-launching the debate between democracy and Islam. After 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden’s jihadist based rhetoric which called for Muslims to wage war against the West, the struggle against terrorism became systematically associated with a ‘clash of civilisations’ between the West and Islam, a religion intertwined in the cultural identity of the Arab world.

Fast forward in 2011 and countries like Tunisia, Egyptand Libya, widely supported by the West in overthrowing a series of dictators who had been in power for decades,  seem to see a surge of Islamic political parties.

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