Why Do Islamists Rise After Governments Fall in Muslim-Majority Countries?

When a powerful government falls in a Muslim-majority country, the first question is usually who will govern next. But perhaps a more important question is this: who is still organised enough to compete for power when the old political system suddenly disappears?

Modern history offers striking examples. Iran’s Shah left for Egypt in 1979, Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia in 2011, Ashraf Ghani left Afghanistan and was later received by the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh for India in 2024, and Bashar al-Assad was evacuated to Russia after his government collapsed.

These countries are very different. Islam itself does not cause governments to collapse, and Islamist movements do not automatically take power whenever a government falls. The more interesting explanation may lie in what authoritarian rulers do to their own political systems before they disappear.

A ruler’s greatest mistake may be crushing every moderate alternative. Authoritarian governments often believe that weakening opposition makes them safer, so they restrict independent media, intimidate civil society, imprison political opponents and manipulate elections.

The immediate result may look like stability, but the long-term result can be the opposite. A mainstream political party needs offices, meetings, campaign workers, media access and freedom to organise. Deny those things for many years and even a once-powerful moderate party can become weak or disconnected from ordinary people.

Religious networks can be harder to erase completely. Mosques remain open, religious schools continue, charities assist families and clerics maintain relationships with communities. Religious identity also survives inside families and neighbourhoods when ordinary political activity is heavily restricted.

This can give religious movements an organisational advantage that is not necessarily theological. It does not mean mosques produce extremists, or that every Islamist organisation is extremist.

Ennahda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaat-e-Islami, the Taliban and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham are very different movements. Some have participated in elections and coalition politics, while others have histories of armed struggle. What matters here is simpler: organisation can survive repression.

Iran remains perhaps the clearest example. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi built a modernising but increasingly authoritarian state in which political opposition was heavily restricted. When revolutionary pressure became overwhelming, he left Iran for Egypt on January 16, 1979.

The revolution was not exclusively Islamist. Liberals, nationalists, Marxists, students and religious groups all participated. Yet Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in France only weeks later, and his movement proved better positioned than many secular forces to dominate the new political order.

Tunisia followed a less extreme path. Ben Ali fled with his family to Saudi Arabia in January 2011 after mass protests ended his rule. Ennahda, which had endured years of repression, then emerged as the strongest party in Tunisia’s first post-revolution election.

Tunisia did not become an extremist Islamic state, and Ennahda later lost considerable influence. But its early success showed how quickly a well-organised religious movement could recover when authoritarian restrictions disappeared.

Egypt showed a related pattern. Hosni Mubarak was removed in 2011 but did not flee abroad; he remained in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood had survived decades of repression through social networks and community organisation, and when competitive elections opened, its political arm became the largest force in parliament and Mohamed Morsi later won the presidency.

Afghanistan was different. Ashraf Ghani was not a decades-long dictator, and the collapse of his government in 2021 involved the American withdrawal, corruption, military failure and two decades of war. Yet when Kabul fell, the Taliban already had fighters, commanders, local networks and a shadow governing structure.

Ghani left the country as the Taliban entered Kabul. The United Arab Emirates later confirmed that it had received him and his family on humanitarian grounds.

Syria provides one of the most dramatic recent examples. For years Bashar al-Assad presented his government as a secular barrier protecting Syria from Islamist extremism, while his regime suppressed opposition and more than a decade of civil war destroyed much of Syria’s moderate political space.

When Assad’s government collapsed in December 2024, an offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham swept into Damascus. Assad was evacuated to Russia, where he and his family were granted asylum.

HTS is an Islamist movement with roots in the Syrian jihadist insurgency and an earlier al-Qaeda affiliation. The irony is difficult to ignore: a ruler who warned that his removal could empower Islamists ended up in Russia, while an Islamist-led force became central to the political order that followed him.

Bangladesh may be even more revealing because the feared outcome did not happen in the most obvious way. Sheikh Hasina fled to India on August 5, 2024 after student protests became a nationwide uprising. Islamists did not overthrow her or immediately take power, but Jamaat-e-Islami returned quickly to the centre of political life.

Before the February 2026 election, I raised some of these concerns in an earlier Times of Israel blog, “Bangladesh’s 2026 Election: After an Uprising and an Uncertain Future”, including the possible consequences of Jamaat’s political resurgence for minorities, women’s rights and Bangladesh’s secular character.

The election did not produce an Islamist government. The BNP returned to power and holds 210 seats, while Jamaat won 68 and became the main opposition force. Bangladesh therefore did not become another Afghanistan, and it would be misleading to suggest that Jamaat captured the state.

But formal control of parliament is not the only form of political power. Islamists do not necessarily need to control the cabinet if religious pressure, mob mobilisation and fear increasingly influence what ordinary people feel safe saying, writing or doing.

Bangladesh continues to face serious rule-of-law problems. Human-rights groups documented mob violence, attacks and harassment involving journalists, severe violence against women and girls, and continuing insecurity among religious minorities during the first half of 2026.

One rights group recorded 1,621 women and girls as victims of violence, including 404 reported rape victims. The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council reported 257 incidents of communal violence and 44 minority deaths during the same period.

These abuses should not automatically be attributed to Jamaat or to Islamists, nor do they make Bangladesh equivalent to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Newspapers still publish, journalists still report and the BNP, not Jamaat, runs the government.

But repeated attacks, threats, religious accusations and weak law enforcement can create another kind of pressure. People begin calculating what is safe to say before they speak, and hard-line religious groups can gain influence without formally controlling the state.

This is why Bangladesh strengthens the larger argument. Hasina’s government spent years restricting political competition; the BNP itself suffered heavily, while Jamaat was pushed outside normal electoral politics and formally banned during the final days of her rule.

Yet suppressing Jamaat did not eliminate the social and religious networks in which Islamist politics could survive. Those networks did not have to be rebuilt after Hasina left for India because they were already there.

This creates a dangerous paradox for authoritarian rulers. They often tell citizens, minorities and foreign governments that without them, extremists will take over. Then they weaken moderate opposition, independent institutions, civil society and free media so thoroughly that their warning can become partly self-fulfilling.

Indonesia shows that this outcome is not inevitable. Suharto fell in 1998 after more than three decades in power in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, yet Indonesia did not simply become an Islamist state. Multiple political parties and civil organisations were able to participate in the transition.

That comparison reveals the real issue. The decisive question is not simply whether a country is Muslim-majority, but whether enough political institutions and moderate alternatives survive authoritarian rule to manage the transition afterward.

Nor is the broader phenomenon unique to Islam. In other eras, communist parties, revolutionary nationalists, military movements and guerrilla organisations have filled similar vacuums after governments collapsed. Whichever organised force survives outside a failing system gains an advantage when that system falls.

For Israel, this matters far beyond political theory. A seemingly stable ruler in the Middle East may suppress jihadist organisations, maintain regional arrangements and appear predictable for decades, but stability built around one individual can disappear quickly.

Israel therefore cannot judge regional stability only by asking who controls the palace today. It must also ask who remains organised outside the palace if the government falls tomorrow.

The safest neighbour is not necessarily the country with the strongest ruler. It may be the country with institutions strong enough that when one government falls, citizens still have democratic alternatives to political extremes.

Independent courts, competitive elections, functioning opposition parties, civil society and free media may frustrate authoritarian leaders. But they also give citizens somewhere peaceful to go when they demand change.

Without those alternatives, anger does not disappear, religion does not disappear and organisation does not disappear. What disappears is the democratic middle.

Rulers who spend years destroying every moderate alternative may therefore discover too late that they did not eliminate the movements they feared most. They simply helped ensure that when their governments fell, those movements would be among the best prepared to rise.

September 11, 2026
Tokyo, Japan