Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies
Courtney Freer
Abstract
This book, using contemporary history and original empirical research, updates traditional rentier state theory, which largely fails to account for the existence of Islamist movements, by demonstrating the political capital held by Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While rentier state theory predicts that citizens of such states will form opposition blocs only when their stake in rent income is threatened, this book demonstrates that ideology, rather than rent, has motivated the formation of independent Islamist movements in the wealthiest stat ... More
This book, using contemporary history and original empirical research, updates traditional rentier state theory, which largely fails to account for the existence of Islamist movements, by demonstrating the political capital held by Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While rentier state theory predicts that citizens of such states will form opposition blocs only when their stake in rent income is threatened, this book demonstrates that ideology, rather than rent, has motivated the formation of independent Islamist movements in the wealthiest states of the region. It argues for this thesis by chronicling the history of the Brotherhood in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE, and showing how the organization adapted to the changing (and often adverse) political environs of those respective countries to remain a popular and influential force for social, educational, and political change in the region. The presence of oil rents, then, far from rendering Islamist complaint politically irrelevant, shapes the ways in which Islamist movements seek to influence government policies.
Keywords:
Muslim Brotherhood,
Islamism,
Gulf politics,
rentier state theory,
rentierism,
Gulf politics,
opposition politics
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190861995 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2018 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190861995.001.0001 |
