ippr have today published a report (pdf) marking the culmination of their two-year research project “on political Islam in the Middle East and North Africa”. It is not impressive.
There are two main problems with this report and, unfortunately for ippr, they are the two main assumptions underpinning it. Firstly, that engagement is always good and must occur with Islamists rather than anybody else (p16 and pp41-42). Secondly, that those poor little political Islamists are simply “misunderstood” and if only we understood them better (like wot ippr do) then everything would be AOK (p41 and p45).
Sorry, but engagement for the sake of engagement is not an argument. The onus is on ippr to argue why political Islamists should be engaged and particularly why they should be engaged ahead of anybody else. Secondly, it is not other people “misunderstanding” Islamism that makes them wary of engagement with Islamists – quite the opposite. A mere faint familiarity with the principal Islamist ideologues is enough to make you very wary of engaging them and their followers.