Download or read book Islam and Democracy written by John L. Esposito and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996-05-09 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are Islam and democracy on a collision course? Do Islamic movements seek to "hijack democracy?" How have governments in the Muslim world responded to the many challenges of Islam and democracy today? A global religious resurgence and calls for greater political participation have been major forces in the post-Cold War period. Across the Muslim world, governments and Islamic movements grapple with issues of democratization and civil society. Islam and Democracy explores the Islamic sources (beliefs and institutions) relevant to the current debate over greater political participation and democratization. Esposito and Voll use six case studies--Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Sudan--to look at the diversity of Muslim experiences and experiments. At one end of the spectrum, Iran and Sudan represent two cases of militant, revolutionary Islam establishing political systems. In Pakistan and Malaysia, however, the new movements have been recognized and made part of the political process. Egypt and Algeria reveal the coexistence of both extremist and moderate Islamic activism and demonstrate the complex challenges confronting ruling elites. These case studies prove that despite commonalities, differing national contexts and identities give rise to a multiplicity of agendas and strategies. This broad spectrum of case studies, reflecting the multifaceted relationship of Islam and Democracy, provides important insight into the powerful forces of religious resurgence and democratization which will inevitably impact global politics in the twenty first century.
Download or read book Why the French Don t Like Headscarves written by John R. Bowen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-24 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text explains why the French government decided to ban religious clothing from public schools and why the 2004 law, which targeted Islamic headscarves, created such a fury.
Download or read book Why the West Fears Islam written by J. Cesari and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-07-24 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jocelyne Cesari examines the idea that Islam might threaten the core values of the West through testimonies from Muslims in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the US. Her book is an unprecedented exploration of Muslim religious and political life based on several years of field work in Europe and in the United States.
Download or read book Western Dominance and Political Islam written by Khalid B. Sayeed and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges prevalent Western media and popular interpretations of Islam. Through a political and historical analysis of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistancountries that represent the religious, ethnic, and ideological spectrum of the Muslim worldit explores whether or not Islam as a political religion and civilization can provide a preferable alternative to Western capitalist democracy. Sayeed argues that although Islamic fundamentalism, particularly in its militant and violent form, lacks the potential to become such a system, some of the major Islamic ideas, if reinterpreted and reformulated, can provide a viable alternative to Western political and economic dominance, especially in the Middle and Near East.
Download or read book Islamic Exceptionalism written by Shadi Hamid and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Islamic Exceptionalism, Brookings Institution scholar and acclaimed author Shadi Hamid offers a novel and provocative argument on how Islam is, in fact, "exceptional" in how it relates to politics, with profound implications for how we understand the future of the Middle East. Divides among citizens aren't just about power but are products of fundamental disagreements over the very nature and purpose of the modern nation state—and the vexing problem of religion’s role in public life. Hamid argues for a new understanding of how Islam and Islamism shape politics by examining different models of reckoning with the problem of religion and state, including the terrifying—and alarmingly successful—example of ISIS. With unprecedented access to Islamist activists and leaders across the region, Hamid offers a panoramic and ambitious interpretation of the region's descent into violence. Islamic Exceptionalism is a vital contribution to our understanding of Islam's past and present, and its outsized role in modern politics. We don't have to like it, but we have to understand it—because Islam, as a religion and as an idea, will continue to be a force that shapes not just the region, but the West as well in the decades to come.
Download or read book When Islam and Democracy Meet Muslims in Europe and in the United States written by Jocelyne Cesari and published by Springer. This book was released on 2004-12-09 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the woefully neglected reality of Islam as a major cultural and relgious facet of American and European politics and societies, Cesari examines how Muslims in the West are challenging the notion of an inevitable clash or confrontation. With nearly twelve million Muslims living in the larger countries of Western Europe and almost six million in America, the challenges of integrating newcomers within different countries, and the place of Islam in democratic and secular context in the post 9/11 context, have become more pertinent. Comparing the interaction of Muslims with their new countries, this book addresses the implications of increased Islamic visability, violent clashes, beneficial cooperation, and questions within the Muslim community about their role and the role of Islam in democratic states. Pursuing a holistic approach to Muslims as a new minority within western democracy, Cesari provides important insights.
Download or read book Islam and Democracy in the Middle East written by Larry Diamond and published by . This book was released on 2003-08-07 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive assessment of the origins and staying power of Middle East autocracies, as well as a sober account of the struggles of state reformers and opposition forces to promote civil liberties, competitive elections and a pluralistic vision of Islam. Drawing on the insights of some 25 leading Western and Middle Eastern scholars, the book highlights the dualistic and often contradictory nature of political liberalization. Yemen suggest, political liberalization - as managed by the state - not only opens new spaces for debate and criticism, but is also used as a deliberate tactic to avoid genuine democratization. In several chapters on Iran, the authors analyze the benefits and costs of limited reform. There, the electoral successes of President Mohammad Khatami and his reformist allies inspired a new generation but have not as yet undermined the clerical establishment's power. By contrast, in Turkey a party with Islamist roots is moving a discredited system beyond decades of conflict and paralysis, following a stunning election victory in 2002. force for change. While acknowledging the enduring attraction of radical Islam throughout the Arab world, the concluding chapters carefully assess the recent efforts of Muslim civil society activists and intellectuals to promote a liberal Islamic alternative. Their struggles to affirm the compatibility of Islam and pluralistic democracy face daunting challenges, not least of which is the persistent efforts of many Arab rulers to limit the influence of all advocates of democracy, secular or religious.
Download or read book Why the West is Best written by Ibn Warraq and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2011-12-13 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We, in the West in general, and the United States in particular, have witnessed over the last twenty years a slow erosion of our civilizational self-confidence. Under the influence of intellectuals and academics in Western universities, intellectuals such as Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, Edward Said, and Noam Chomsky, and destructive intellectual fashions such as post-modernism, moral relativism, and mulitculturalism, the West has lost all self-confidence in its own values, and seems incapable and unwilling to defend those values. By contrast, resurgent Islam, in all its forms, is supremely confident, and is able to exploit the West's moral weakness and cultural confusion to demand ever more concessions from her. The growing political and demographic power of Muslim communities in the West, aided and abetted by Western apologists of Islam, not to mention a compliant, pro-Islamic US Administration, has resulted in an ever-increasing demand for the implementation of Islamic law-the Sharia- into the fabric of Western law, and Western constitutions. There is an urgent need to examine why the Sharia is totally incompatible with Human Rights and the US Constitution. This book , the first of its kind, proposes to examine the Sharia and its potential and actual threat to democratic principles. This book defines and defends Western values, strengths and freedoms often taken for granted. This book also tackles the taboo subjects of racism in Asian culture, Arab slavery, and Islamic Imperialism. It begins with a homage to New York City, as a metaphor for all we hold dear in Western culture- pluralism, individualism, freedom of expression and thought, the complete freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness unhampered by totalitarian regimes, and theocratic doctrines.
Download or read book Reconciliation written by Benazir Bhutto and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October 2007, after eight years of exile, hopeful that she could be a catalyst for change. Upon a tumultuous reception, she survived a suicide-bomb attack that killed nearly two hundred of her countrymen. But she continued to forge ahead, with more courage and conviction than ever, since she knew that time was running out—for the future of her nation, and for her life. In Reconciliation, Bhutto recounts in gripping detail her final months in Pakistan and offers a bold new agenda for how to stem the tide of Islamic radicalism and to rediscover the values of tolerance and justice that lie at the heart of her religion. With extremist Islam on the rise throughout the world, the peaceful, pluralistic message of Islam has been exploited and manipulated by fanatics. Bhutto persuasively argues that America and Britain are fueling this turn toward radicalization by supporting groups that serve only short-term interests. She believed that by enabling dictators, the West was actually contributing to the frustration and extremism that lead to terrorism. With her experience governing Pakistan and living and studying in the West, Benazir Bhutto was versed in the complexities of the conflict from both sides. She was a renaissance woman who offered a way out. In this riveting and deeply insightful book, Bhutto explores the complicated history between the Middle East and the West. She traces the roots of international terrorism across the world, including American support for Pakistani general Zia-ul-Haq, who destroyed political parties, eliminated an independent judiciary, marginalized NGOs, suspended the protection of human rights, and aligned Pakistani intelligence agencies with the most radical elements of the Afghan mujahideen. She speaks out not just to the West, but to the Muslims across the globe who are at a crossroads between the past and the future, between education and ignorance, between peace and terrorism, and between dictatorship and democracy. Democracy and Islam are not incompatible, and the clash between Islam and the West is not inevitable. Bhutto presents an image of modern Islam that defies the negative caricatures often seen in the West. After reading this book, it will become even clearer what the world has lost by her assassination.
Download or read book Civil Democratic Islam written by Cheryl Benard and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2004-03-25 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the face of Islam's own internal struggles, it is not easy to see who we should support and how. This report provides detailed descriptions of subgroups, their stands on various issues, and what those stands may mean for the West. Since the outcomes can matter greatly to international community, that community might wish to influence them by providing support to appropriate actors. The author recommends a mixed approach of providing specific types of support to those who can influence the outcomes in desirable ways.
Download or read book Islam and Democracy written by Asef Bayat and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can islam and democracy exist side by side? Is Islam compatible with democracy? The text examines one of the most frequently-asked and yet misguided questions. Democratic ethos should not and cannot be deduced from some essence of religions supposedly inscribed in the scriptures. Rather, they are the outcome of political struggles that push Islam toward democratic or authoritarian directions. Asef Bayat offers a new approach to examine Islam and democracy arguing how the social struggles of diverse Muslim populations, those with different interests and orientation, render Islam to embrace democratic ideas or authoritarian disposition. "Islamism" and "post-Islamism" are discussed as representing two contrasting movements which have taken Islam into different, authoritarian and inclusive, political directions.
Download or read book Muslims Talking Politics written by Brandon Kendhammer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-06-22 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For generations Islamic and Western intellectuals and policymakers have debated Islam’s compatibility with democratic government, usually with few solid conclusions. But where—Brandon Kendhammer asks in this book—have the voices of ordinary, working-class Muslims been in this conversation? Doesn’t the fate of democracy rest in their hands? Visiting with community members in northern Nigeria, he tells the complex story of the stunning return of democracy to a country that has also embraced Shariah law and endured the radical religious terrorism of Boko Haram. Kendhammer argues that despite Nigeria’s struggles with jihadist insurgency, its recent history is really one of tenuous and fragile reconciliation between mass democratic aspirations and concerted popular efforts to preserve Islamic values in government and law. Combining an innovative analysis of Nigeria’s Islamic and political history with visits to the living rooms of working families, he sketches how this reconciliation has been constructed in the conversations, debates, and everyday experiences of Nigerian Muslims. In doing so, he uncovers valuable new lessons—ones rooted in the real politics of ordinary life—for how democracy might work alongside the legal recognition of Islamic values, a question that extends far beyond Nigeria and into the Muslim world at large.
Download or read book Islam Authoritarianism and Underdevelopment written by Ahmet T. Kuru and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.
Download or read book Making Islam Democratic written by Asef Bayat and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks anew at the vexing question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy, examining histories of Islamic politics and social movements in the Middle East since the 1970s.
Download or read book The Awakening of Muslim Democracy written by Jocelyne Cesari and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-14 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why and how did Islam become such a political force in so many Muslim-majority countries? In this book, Jocelyne Cesari investigates the relationship between modernization, politics, and Islam in Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Tunisia, and Turkey - countries that were founded by secular rulers and have since undergone secularized politics. Cesari argues that nation-building processes in these states have not created liberal democracies in the Western mold, but have instead spurred the politicization of Islam by turning it into a modern national ideology. Looking closely at examples of Islamic dominance in political modernization, this study provides a unique overview of the historical and political developments from the end of World War II to the Arab Spring that have made Islam the dominant force in the construction of the modern states, and discusses Islam's impact on emerging democracies in the contemporary Middle East.
Download or read book Islam and the West written by Mustapha Chérif and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 2003, Jacques Derrida sat down for a public debate in Paris with Algerian intellectual Mustapha Chérif. The eminent philosopher arrived at the event directly from the hospital where he had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the illness that would take his life just over a year later. That he still participated in the exchange testifies to the magnitude of the subject at hand: the increasingly distressed relationship between Islam and the West, and the questions of freedom, justice, and democracy that surround it. As Chérif relates in this account of their dialogue, the topic of Islam held special resonance for Derrida—perhaps it is to be expected that near the end of his life his thoughts would return to Algeria, the country where he was born in 1930. Indeed, these roots served as the impetus for their conversation, which first centers on the ways in which Derrida’s Algerian-Jewish identity has shaped his thinking. From there, the two men move to broader questions of secularism and democracy; to politics and religion and how the former manipulates the latter; and to the parallels between xenophobia in the West and fanaticism among Islamists. Ultimately, the discussion is an attempt to tear down the notion that Islam and the West are two civilizations locked in a bitter struggle for supremacy and to reconsider them as the two shores of the Mediterranean—two halves of the same geographical, religious, and cultural sphere. Islam and the West is a crucial opportunity to further our understanding of Derrida’s views on the key political and religious divisions of our time and an often moving testament to the power of friendship and solidarity to surmount them.
Download or read book Islam and Democracy written by Timothy D. Sisk and published by US Institute of Peace Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the relationship between religion and politics generally, as well as the global wave of democratization in the late twentieth century, as background to different interpretations of political Islam. It analyzes the role of these movements in Iran, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, the Persian Gulf (especially Saudi Arabia), and the Palestinian community.
