As part of its intellectual activities, Al-Rafidain Center for Dialogue organized a panel discussion for Mr. Talib Al-Rifai entitled "The Problem of Islamic Movements in the Arab World; an analytical vision ", at the Headquarters of RCD on Thursday, 6 September 2018. The panel discussion addressed the beginning of the emergence of Islamic political movements in the Arab world. Algeria was the first cradle of these movements, which aimed at fighting the foreign occupation. Then, Mr. Rifai moved to talk about the first Islamic movement aimed at building an Islamic state, the Movement of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which was founded by Sheikh Hassan Al-Banna, the establishment of the Islamic political movement in Iraq, especially the Islamic Dawa Party, and the circumstances of its founding were the essence of the panel discussion. The lecturer goes on to talk about the stage of establishment and the subsequent problems, as was updated during the panel discussion on the future of Islamic movements in the Arab world, which Mr. Rifai believes that its future is in danger and that secularism will be the heir to the next political scene. The panel discussion witnessed elitist discussions in which attendees participated in their various intellectual and political orientations, where it was moderated by Dr. Taleb Mohammed Karim, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of RCD.

Below are the most important outcomes of the panel discussion:

1-      The beginning of the emergence of Islamic political parties in the Arab world was in the Maghreb countries, in which Algeria was first, where the Islamic movement was founded by Sheikhs Ben Badis and Al-Bashir Al-Ibrahimi, where that movement has developed to be a movement for national liberation. The second country is Morocco, where the movement was founded under the auspices of King Mohammed V and worked to liberate Morocco from French colonialism.

2-      The first Islamic movement that adopted the establishment of an Islamic state is the Muslim Brotherhood movement founded by Sheikh Hassan Al-Banna, which at the beginning of its call was aimed at preparing society for the establishment of the Islamic State and did not adopt violence in order to gain power, evidenced by the fact that Hassan Al-Banna intended to enter parliament, indicating his recognition of the legitimacy of the ruling regime.

3-      The other Islamist party that emerged at the time was Hizb ut-Tahrir, despite their sectarian similarity with the Muslim Brotherhood, but their approach is very different from that of the Brotherhood in terms of moderation, as Hizb ut-Tahrir has an extremist tendency towards other Islamic sects.

4-      The date of the founding of the Islamic Dawa Party had a lot of fallacies, the real date of the establishment of the party dates back to 1959 and any other dates of establishment or conferences or founding are not valid.

5-      The problem of thought idealism and non-application is a problem that exists in all movements and religions and does not exclude Islamic movements.

6-      The emergence of Islamic movements was a reaction to the communist tide that took place during the 1950s that made scholars and clerics look for a way to repel that tide, and here came the idea to establish Islamic movements and the group of scholars was the first of those movements.

7-      The unwillingness to govern by preparing the necessary cadres capable of managing the state misleads the actual experience when gaining power, in addition to that in the Iraqi case is the heavy legacy of Saddam Hussein's regime and the problems it has left behind, which is not easy to bear burden with by one party.