1 A question of faith? - Islamists and secularists fight over the post-Mubarak state Bjørn Olav Utvik, * University of Oslo Since the military coup of 3 July 2013, guns and batons have, broadly speaking, taken the place of open debate and elections in deciding the political future of Egypt. How can the political struggle be understood with regard to the shape and content of the reformed post-Mubarak state that took place during the period of relative free debate and of tentative steps towards a democratic system from 11 February 2011 till 3 July 2013. 1 In light of the deepening polarisation between the Muslim Brothers and the more secular political tendencies that characterised the period, the conflict is often portrayed by the media and by some researchers as between a project of Islamisation and a secularist agenda. 2 To what extent does this hold true? In this article I will argue a) that what took place was rather a power struggle involving competing elites as well as what is sometimes termed the “deep state”, i.e. the entrenched power holders from Mubarak’s time, especially in the military, the police and the judiciary, and b) to the extent that secularisation was at stake, in some important aspects Islamists turned out to be, if anything, more secularising than their secularist competitors. What follows is nothing near a full treatment of the transitional period. Neither is it a formal study of constitutional issues, although it does dwell on some important aspects of the new constitution finalised in 2012. My primary interest here is what the struggle over the new constitution, and more broadly over the path to be followed in the transition process can tell us about the main forces at work at the heart of the intense political conflict that developed. Keywords: political transition in Egypt; Islamists and secularists in Egypt; post-Mubarak state Jumbling a key concept To secure a basis for a meaningful discussion on issues of secularisation it is necessary to dwell a bit on the content of this term. A typical broad definition of secularisation, taken from an online dictionary, is “the activity of changing something [....] so it is no longer under the control or influence of religion”. 3 In terms of political systems it is often thought of as a strict separation of religion and state. In one sense this is a contradiction in terms, since as long as religion remains a factor influencing the morals and values of the population by the same token it will never be totally separate from their political behaviour. Trying to eradicate this kind of influence, for instance, by prohibiting parties with a religious reference in their program only serves to make religious influence less explicit and is more often than not, in reality, a move to exclude an unwelcome political contestant for power. An institutional separation of religion and state on the other hand is certainly a relevant issue and has, historically, been implemented by a number of countries, most notably by France, where a strict policy of the total religious neutrality of all state institutions has been in force since 1905 (Safran 2004). Turkey, often claimed as the beacon of secularism in the Middle East, has emphatically not followed this path. Turkey admittedly did under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1923-1938) remove religious leaders from the privileged position they enjoyed in the Ottoman state, but rather than separating religion from the state, it placed the legal religious life of the country under the supervision of a government agency, the Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı (Presidency of Religious Affairs), commonly known as the Diyanet (Başkan 2014, 55). * email: b.o.utvik@ikos.uio.no