Arab Revolts and the 'Civil State'. A new term for old conflicts between Islamism and secularism.

The Arab revolts that erupted in late 2010, forcing from power the rulers of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and dragging Syria through a ferocious civil war, renovated the public debate on government in Islamic countries. In all those countries, after removing the authoritarian regimes (or fighting against them), political arena divided in two main camps, both claiming for democracy: Islamic parties and secularists. Within the political discourse of both sides a new concept started to play a focal role: the 'civil state', dawla madaniyya, that, however, reveals different semantic interpretations according to the political actors involved, meaning both 'no military or theocratic (but Islamic) State', and 'secular State'. We'll especially analyze the use of the term 'dawla madaniyya' since the beginning of the Arab revolts until 2014, in Tunisia and Egypt and, for the same time period, the political practices of islamist and secularist parties (government experiences, constituent assemblies) focusing on the effectiveness of the dawla madaniyya paradigm in order to build a democratic State.