This year may see the resolution of the Middle East’s civil wars. Eight years on, the violent after-effects of the 2011 uprisings in the Arab world still wreak havoc on the populations of Yemen, Syria and Libya. These countries have, inevitably, become arenas where regional powers pursue their respective interests but an end may be in sight — at least in Yemen and Syria. understand how regional rivalries could play out and affect the polities that will emerge from them, it is important to consider an ideological schism within Islamism, often hidden from view. The Iran-Saudi rivalry , which, since 2011, has dominated the region and pervaded its wars, can be interpreted in geopolitical and sectarian terms. But these interpretations must be complemented by a third: the ideological clash between two models of Islamism, one top-down and the other bottom-up. The top-down model is associated with Saudi Arabia, a state run according to a pact between the Saudi monarchy and the Wahhabi clerical establishment since its inception in 1932, and even before, in the proto-states that preceded it. Saudi Arabian politics and society are infused with religion but it is an Islamism controlled by the regime, which sets the tone and determines the religious content of political institutions, legal precepts and social mores. The Saudi model is challenged by a bottom-up Islamism powered by mass mobilisation, which comes in a variety of guises. In 1979, the Iranian Revolution quickly took an Islamist turn and attacked the Saudi Wahhabi ideology. Another variant of the bottom-up model is employed by the Saudi regime’s other adversary, the Muslim Brotherhood, which sees the reformed individual as the stepping stone for the construction of an Islamist society and an Islamic state. According to this model, “the people”, when given the right to express their political preferences freely, will naturally gravitate towards Islam. Brotherhood organisations have come to favour elections in the expectation that voters will propel them to power. This view, which imagines an intrinsic bond between the people and Islam, is a common thread that links the Muslim Brotherhood (and Brotherhood-inspired organisations) in Egypt, Tunisia, Gaza with Turkey’s Justice and Development party. Each derives legitimacy from popular appeal and arrogates to itself the role of people’s representative. Such claims are also put forward by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Iran-backed group Hizbollah and their allies. In thinking about how the struggle at the heart of Islamism will play out in 2019 and shape the future of the region’s politics, we should avoid a number of blind alleys. It is futile, for example, to ask which model is closer to the true Islam — no such thing exists. Both are validated by the texts and traditions of the religion, with the help of pliant religious officials on each side. Asking which model is likely to be more moderate is similarly facile. Neither is inherently so and history shows us that either can lead to extremism and the employment of violent tactics or, equally, to their renunciation. Neither model is necessarily conducive to liberal democracy, a measure of which will be required in resolving the civil wars of Syria, Yemen and Libya and freeing the Middle East from its present political impasse. The bottom-up model can drive democracy but, by the same token, majoritarianism leads to populist, authoritarian politics. The top-down reformism of the Saudi regime, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has modernised some areas of public life and granted a few rights but only at the sufferance of the regime. Rival proponents of Islamist ideologies will continue to fight it out but neither side is inherently more favourable to the values of freedom, tolerance and accountability the region badly needs. F.T