This study, using contemporary history and empirical research, updates traditional rentier state theory, which largely fails to account for the existence of opposition movements, by demonstrating the political capital held by Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This study thus also fills a critical gap in existing literature on political Islam by examining previously unstudied movements in the smaller Gulf states that do not require Brotherhood organisations to provide services, to form social networks, or to contest elections (aside from in Kuwait). Through a divergent case study, we demonstrate the degree to which and the means through which the Ikhwan shapes domestic politics in the some of the world’s wealthiest oil states, the super-rentiers. This research helps to break the causal link established by rentier state theory between oil rents and lack of politically relevant Islamist organizations. As will be shown, Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the Gulf are politically influential entities. It is important to note, however, that these groups shape cultural and social ideas as readily as political notions. The division between these sectors is often blurred in the atmosphere of the socially conservative super-rentiers, as politics is often displaced to the social sphere in restricted political systems. We therefore elucidate a new model for understanding how Muslim Brotherhood movements influence government policies, in addition to cultural and social policies, in the wealthiest rentier states of the Gulf, which we call rentier Islamism.

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The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has since the start of the Syrian uprising in March 2011 moved from a low-key position in exile to become one of the main actors in the political opposition. There appears to be a consensus among researchers today on the democratic commitment of the Syrian Brotherhood. However, ambiguity remains regarding its commitment towards gender equality, women’s rights and participation. This essay focuses on the gender discourse of the Syrian Brotherhood’s leadership, according to its policy-documents, from 2004 – 2013. By applying a critical discourse analysis, a movement from a more Islamist, exclusionary discourse in 2004 towards a more inclusive, feminist inspired discourse in 2013 becomes apparent. Nonetheless, traditional gender roles linger and more Islamist and pan-Arab, pan-Islamic discourses are not distant features. The movement of the gender discourse towards greater inclusion confirms claims made by democratic theorists on inclusion and moderation.

Ever since the military takeover of 1952, the post-monarchic political system of Egypt has been dependent upon a variety of mechanisms and structures to establish and further consolidate its powerbase. Among those, an intertwined web of what could be described as ‘patronage politics’ emerged as one of the main foundations of these tools and was utilized by the regime to establish the fundamentals of its rule. Throughout the post-1952 era, political patrons and respective clients were existent in Egyptian politics, shaping, to a great extent, the policies implemented by Egypt's rulers at the apex of the political system, as well as the tactics orchestrated by the populace within the middle and lower echelons of the polity. This study aims at analyzing the factors that ensured the durability of patronage networks within the Egyptian polity, primarily focusing on the sort of social structural reconfiguration that has been taking place in the popular communities of Egypt in the beginning of the 21st Century. Dissecting the area of Misr Al Qadima as an exemplar case study of Cairo’s popular quarters, the research mainly focuses on examining the role of the lesser notables, those middle patrons and clients that exist on the lower levels of the Egyptian polity within the ranks of the National Democratic Party and the Muslim Brotherhood. Henceforth, the sociopolitical agency of these lesser notabilities shall constitute the prime concern of the writing and, in doing so; this research also attempts to draw some linkage between the micro-level features of the popular polities of Cairo and the macro-level realities of the Egyptian polity at large, in the contemporary period.

The Qatari-funded channel, Al-Jazeera Arabic (AJA) has been subject to criticism as being in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt. The approach taken by AJA Satellite Television to represent the MB, the Mubarak regime and other political actors in Egypt, during its coverage of four key electoral moments - before and after the 2011‘revolution’- is reviewed in this research. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is applied to study the constructive effects of AJA’s language in an interpretive way (Parker & Burman, 1993). The effect of the language used by two predominant AJA TV programmes, Without Borders بلا حدود and Opposite Direction الاتجاه المعاكس has been investigated and a number of current and former AJA journalists have been interviewed. Van Dijk’s Ideological Square and Pier Robinson’s Framing Model, in conjunction with Chouliaraki’s Three Rhetorical Strategies (Verbal Mode, Agency and Time Space) have been used as analysis tools to study the process of AJA’s representation of different political ideologies: the MB’s Islamic ideology and the Mubarak regime’s secular ideology. Van Dijk’s Ideological Square helps to identify the boundaries between ‘us’ (the good) and ‘them’ (the bad), and to classify people according to their support of specific ideology against another - the ‘in-group’ or the ‘outgroup’. AJA positively framed the Islamic MB movement on the basis that the group and its members were democratic, Islamic and victims, whereas it negatively framed the Mubarak regime and the Military Council in Egypt as repressive, secular and villains. The assigned role of different actors (including; the Egyptian people and opposition parties) in AJA TV programmes changed from one electoral moment to another. While the Mubarak regime, its supporters and the Military Council were represented as the ‘out-group’ at all times, the role allocated to the Egyptian people and the opposition shifted between the ‘in-group’ and the ‘out-group’, depending on the political mood they held towards the MB.