Download or read book Islamists of the Maghreb written by Jeffry Halverson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2011, the Maghreb occupied a prominent place in world headlines when Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, became the birthplace of the so-called Arab Spring. Events in Tunisia sparked huge and sometimes violent uprisings. Longstanding dictatorships fell in their wake. The ensuing democratic reforms resulted in elections and the victory of several Islamist political parties in the Arab world. This book explores the origins, development and rise of these Islamist parties by focusing on the people behind them. In doing so, it provides readers with a concise history of Sunni Islam in North Africa, the violent struggles against European colonial occupation, and the subsequent quest for an affirmation of Muslim identities in its wake. Exploring Islamism as an identity movement rooted in the colonial experience, this book argues that votes for Islamist parties after the Arab Spring reflected a universal human need for an authentic sense of self. This view contrasts with the popular belief that support for Islamists in North Africa reflects a dangerous "fundamentalist" view of the world that seeks to simply impose archaic religious laws on modern societies. Rather, the electoral success of Islamists in the Maghreb, like Tunisia's Ennahdha party, is rooted in a reaffirmation of the Arab-Islamic identities of the Maghreb states, long delayed by dictatorships that mimicked Western models and ideologies (e.g., Socialism). Ultimately, however, it is argued that this affirmation is a temporary phenomenon that will give way in time to the fundamental need for good governance, accountability, and a stable growing economy in these countries. Written in an accessible format, and providing fresh analytical perspectives on Islamism in the Maghreb, this book will be a valuable tool for students and scholars of Political Islam and North African Politics.
Download or read book A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period written by Jamil M. Abun-Nasr and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1987-08-20 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new history of North Africa within the Islamic period from the Arab conquest to the present.
Download or read book Seeking Legitimacy written by Aili Mari Tripp and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative study based on extensive fieldwork, and an original database of gender-based reforms in the Middle East and North Africa, Aili Mari Tripp analyzes why autocratic leaders in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia adopted more extensive women's rights than their Middle Eastern counterparts.
Download or read book The Moors of the Maghreb written by Charles River and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-08-27 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term Moor is a historical rather than an ethnic name. It is an invention of European Christians for the Islamic inhabitants of Maghreb (North Africa), Andalusia (Spain), Sicily and Malta, and was sometimes use to designate all Muslims. It is derived from Mauri, the Latin name for the Berbers who lived in the Roman province of Mauretania, which ranged across modern Algeria and Morocco. Saracen was another European term used to designate Muslims, though it usually referred to the Arabic peoples of the Middle East and derives from an ancient name for the Arabs, Sarakenoi. The Muslims of those regions no more refer to themselves by that term than those of North Africa call themselves Moors. Maghreb, or al-Maghreb, is a historical term used by Arabic Muslims for the territory of coastal North Africa from Alexandria to the Atlantic Coast. It means "The West" and is used in opposition to Mashrek, "The East," used to refer to the lands of Islam in the Middle East and north-eastern Africa. The Berbers refer to the region in their own language as Tamazgha. In a limited, precise sense it can also refer to the Kingdom of Morocco, the proper name of which is al-Mamlakah al-Maghribiyyah, "Kingdom of the West." Ethnically the people of North Africa are mostly of mixed Arab-Berber descent, and the Berbers are a proud and noble group of peoples dating from ancient times. The term Berber is again a foreign designation, coming from the Greek barbaroi, meaning stranger. By implication, as far as the Greeks and Romans were concerned, the word indicated the people were uncivilized. From this comes the archaic English name Barbary, used to designate the north coast of Africa and still used in "Barbary ape" and the breed of horse known as the Barb. The Berbers call themselves Imazighen, though in truth they are a grouping of different tribes rather than a strictly homogenous group. There are at least 12 linguistic families spoken in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, parts of Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania. The last, a large republic on the north-western African coast, shares the same name as the ancient Roman province, though they are unconnected: its former French rulers gave it the name. In ancient times the Berbers established powerful and important kingdoms in northern Africa and the kingdoms of Syphax and Gala ruled Numidia - now part of Algeria - until conquered by Carthage. After the fall of Carthage, the Berber kingdom of Mauritania - not to be confused with the country created by the French - dominated North-western Africa before itself succumbing to the Romans in the 1st century BCE. Christian Europe has generally given the Berbers a reputation as a wild and barbarous people, whereas in fact they have had a long, sophisticated and cultured history, and under Roman rule they made great contributions to civilization. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, was a Berber and one of the greatest philosophers and theologians not only of his own time, but of all time. The theologian Tertullian also hailed from North Africa, and the Berbers produced three popes: Victor I, Miltiades and Gelasius I. Arius, the priest who denied the divinity of Christ and gave his name to a form of Christianity that rivalled Catholicism for more than 400 years, called North Africa home. In the 5th century, the Northwest African Coast was conquered by the Vandals, a Germanic tribe originating in Eastern Europe, but they in turn succumbed to the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century. The whole of the African coast from the Sinai Peninsula to the Straits of Gibraltar remained under Byzantine rule until the 7th century, when a major geopolitical change elevated the Berbers once again to the status of regional powers and ushered in the domination of Islam across the region.
Download or read book Salafism in the Maghreb written by Frederic Wehrey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arab Maghreb-the long stretch of North Africa that expands from Libya to Mauritania-is a vitally important region that impacts the security and politics of Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and the broader Middle East. As Middle East scholars Frederic Wehrey and Anouar Boukhars show in Salafism in the Maghreb, it is also home to the conservative, literalist interpretation of Islam known as Salafism, which has emerged as a major social and political force. Through extensive interviews and fieldwork, Wehrey and Boukhars examine the many roles and manifestations of Salafism in the Maghreb, looking at the relationship between Salafism and the Maghreb's ruling regimes, as well as competing Islamist currents, increasingly youthful populations, and communal groups like tribes and ethno-linguistic minorities. They pay particular attention to how seemingly immutable Salafi ideology is often shaped by local contexts and opportunities. Informed by rigorous research, deep empathy, and unparalleled access to Salafi adherents, clerics, politicians, and militants, Salafism in the Maghreb offers a definitive account of this important Islamist current.
Download or read book Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel written by Alexander Thurston and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers unique insights into the inner workings of jihadist organisations over the past three decades in North Africa and the Sahel.
Download or read book Exile in the Maghreb written by Paul B. Fenton and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-05-05 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Exile in the Maghreb entails the first attempt at describing the historical reality of the legal and social condition of the Jews in the Muslim countries of North Africa (principally Algeria and Morocco) over a thousand year period from the Middle Ages (997 C.E.) to the French colonization (1830 Algeria/1912 Morocco.). The Exile is not a formal history but a chronological anthology of documents drawn from literary (section A) and archival sources (section B), many of which are published for the first time. In section A, Arabic and Hebrew chronicles, Muslim legal, and theological texts are followed by the accounts culled from European travelers—captives, diplomats, doctors, clerics, and adventurers. Each document is introduced and annotated in such a way as to bring out its importance. The second section (B) reflects the diplomatic activity deployed by humanitarian organizations in favour of North African Jewry. Spanning the 19th and early 20th centuries, these are mainly drawn from the archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (Paris) and the Anglo-Jewish Association (London). The documents are richly elucidated with illustrations taken from the international press. The book presents a new and illuminating insight into the status of Jews under the Crescent. The Jews of North Africa were the only minority under Islam, in this region and their history reflects Judaism's exclusive encounter with Islam.
Download or read book Radical Arab Nationalism and Political Islam written by Lahouari Addi and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Radical Arab nationalism emerged in the modern era as a response to European political and cultural domination, culminating in a series of military coups in the mid-20th century in Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. This movement heralded the dawn of modern, independent nations that would close the economic, social, scientific, and military gaps with the West while building a unity of Arab nations. But this dream failed. In fact, radical Arab nationalism became a barrier to civil peace and national cohesion, most tragically demonstrated in the case of Syria, for two reasons: 1) national armies militarized nationalism and its political objectives; 2) these nations did not keep pace with the intellectual and political and cultural and social progress of European nations that offered, for example, freedom of speech and thought. It was the failure of radical Arab nationalism, Addi contends, that made the more recent political Islam so popular. But if radical nationalism militarized politics, the Islamists politicized religion. Today, the prevailing medieval interpretation of Islam, defended by the Islamists, prevents these nations from making progress and achieving the kind of social justice that radical Arab nationalism once promised. Will political Islam fail, too? Can nations ruled by political Islam accommodate modernity? Their success or failure, Addi writes, depends upon this question.
Download or read book Exile in the Maghreb written by Paul Fenton and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reviews a thousand years of Jewish history in North Africa under Islam, culled from literary sources such as Islamic legal and theological texts, European travel accounts, and diplomatic dispatches, as well as unpublished archival material.
Download or read book Political Islam Inside Out written by Giulia Cimini and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-25 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the evolution of key Islamist movements and parties in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco. It offers a novel and exhaustive study of the evolution of Islamists as shaped by the interplay of domestic, regional, and international factors. Providing an in-depth, theoretically grounded and empirically rich study of political Islam, the volume explores how the overly under-appreciated interaction of domestic, regional and international factors impacts the development of contemporary Islamist actors. By tracing how they adapt and resist to challenging environments within and beyond national boundaries, it charts and explains many of the critical changes and continuities in their organisational set-up, policy choices, ideological leanings, and narratives. Through an inside-out perspective and actor-centered approach, this book aims to overcome the ‘compartmentalisation’ of the domestic and international spheres as well as the ‘obsession’ with moderation for Islamists. Specifically, the book chapters address how Islamist actors (re)interpret external events, norms, ideas, and practices from abroad in the light of the constraints and opportunities of their respective domestic environments. At the crossroads of comparative politics, international relations and area studies, it is a key resource for practitioners and scholars interested in party politics, social movements, political Islam and North Africa. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Contemporary Politics.
Download or read book Why Alliances Fail written by Matt Buehler and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-23 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 2011, the Arab world has seen a number of autocrats, including leaders from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, fall from power. Yet, in the wake of these political upheavals, only one state, Tunisia, transitioned successfully from authoritarianism to democracy. Opposition parties forged a durable and long-term alliance there, which supported democratization. Similar pacts failed in Morocco and Mauritania, however. In Why Alliances Fail, Buehler explores the circumstances under which stable, enduring alliances are built to contest authoritarian regimes, marshaling evidence from coalitions between North Africa’s Islamists and leftists. Buehler draws on nearly two years of Arabic fieldwork interviews, original statistics, and archival research, including interviews with the first Islamist prime minister in Moroccan history, Abdelilah Benkirane. Introducing a theory of alliance durability, Buehler explains how the nature of an opposition party’s social base shapes the robustness of alliances it builds with other parties. He also examines the social origins of authoritarian regimes, concluding that those regimes that successfully harnessed the social forces of rural isolation and clientelism were most effective at resisting the pressure for democracy that opposition parties exerted. With fresh insight and compelling arguments, Why Alliances Fail carries vital implications for understanding the mechanisms driving authoritarian persistence in the Arab world and beyond.
Download or read book Political Islam in Tunisia written by Anne M. Wolf and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political Islam in Tunisia uncovers the secret history of Tunisia's main Islamist movement, Ennahda, from its origins in the 1960s to the present. Banned until the popular uprisings of 2010-11 and the overthrow of Ben Ali's dictatorship, Ennahda has until now been impossible to investigate. This is the first in-depth account of the movement, one of Tunisia's most influential political actors. Drawing on more than four years of field research, over 400 interviews, and access to private archives, Anne Wolf masterfully unveils the evolution of Ennahda's ideological and strategic orientations within changing political contexts and, at times, conflicting ambitions amongst its leading cadres. She also explores the challenges to Ennahda's quest for power from both secularists and Salafis. As the first full history of Ennahda, this book is a major contribution to the literature on Tunisia, Islamist movements, and political Islam in the Arab world. It will be indispensable reading for anyone seeking to understand the forces driving a key player in the country most hopeful of pursuing a democratic trajectory in the wake of the Arab Spring.
Download or read book Political Ascent written by Emad Eldin Shahin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-23 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Islamic movements in North Africa have historically been distinguished from their counterparts in other parts of the Arab world because they have demonstrated a marked willingness to work within the political system and have at times even been officially recognized and allowed to participate in local and national elections. As a result, Islamic thinkers from the Maghrib have produced important writing about the role of Islam and the state, democracy, and nonviolent change. In this book, Emad Shahin offers a comparative analysis of the Islamic movements in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, exploring their formation and expansion in the late 1960s and the tenets of their ideology for social transformation. }Islamic movements in North Africa have historically been distinguished from their counterparts in other parts of the Arab world because they have demonstrated a marked willingness to work within the political system and have at times even been officially recognized and allowed to participate in local and national elections. As a result, Islamic thinkers from the Maghrib have produced important writing about the role of Islam and the state, democracy, and nonviolent change. In this book, Emad Shahin offers a comparative analysis of the Islamic movements in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, exploring the roots of their development, the nature of their dynamics, and the tenets of their ideology. He argues that the formation and expansion of Islamic movements since the late 1960s has come in response to the marginalization of Islam in state and society and to a perceived failure of imported models of development to resolve socioeconomic problems or to incorporate the Muslim belief system into a workable plan for social transformation. }
Download or read book Islamists and the Politics of the Arab Uprisings written by Hendrik Kraetzschmar and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-30 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrates how the textual output of settler emigration shapes the nineteenth-century literary and artistic imagination
Download or read book The Berbers and the Islamic State written by Maya Shatzmiller and published by Princeton : Markus Wiener Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Especially germane at a time when Arabs and Islam are reflexively equated, Schatzmiller (U. of Western Ontario) studies the Berbers' search for their place in Islamic history since their 8th century conquest. Atypically, the author points out the strengths of this North African Berber-Islamic state--larger than present-day Morocco--in the 13th-15th centuries under the rule of Islamophile Marinid tribes. Encompassing her writings from 1976- 93, she discusses the waqf endowment for the public good institution as an example of acculturation to Islamic norms and the Kitab al-ans-ab history text in terms of Berber identity issues. Appendices provides details on this text and the waqf system. Includes illustrations of texts, artifacts, and mosques. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Young Islam written by Avi Max Spiegel and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the competition for young recruits is creating rivalries among Islamists today Today, two-thirds of all Arab Muslims are under the age of thirty. Young Islam takes readers inside the evolving competition for their support—a competition not simply between Islamism and the secular world, but between different and often conflicting visions of Islam itself. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research among rank-and-file activists in Morocco, Avi Spiegel shows how Islamist movements are encountering opposition from an unexpected source—each other. In vivid and compelling detail, he describes the conflicts that arise as Islamist groups vie with one another for new recruits, and the unprecedented fragmentation that occurs as members wrangle over a shared urbanized base. Looking carefully at how political Islam is lived, expressed, and understood by young people, Spiegel moves beyond the top-down focus of current research. Instead, he makes the compelling case that Islamist actors are shaped more by their relationships to each other than by their relationships to the state or even to religious ideology. By focusing not only on the texts of aging elites but also on the voices of diverse and sophisticated Muslim youths, Spiegel exposes the shifting and contested nature of Islamist movements today—movements that are being reimagined from the bottom up by young Islam. The first book to shed light on this new and uncharted era of Islamist pluralism in the Middle East and North Africa, Young Islam uncovers the rivalries that are redefining the next generation of political Islam.
Download or read book The Victim and Its Masks written by Abdellah Hammoudi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1993-11 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each year, in a solemn Sunni Muslim feast, the Ait Mizane of southern Morocco reenact the story of Abraham as a ritual sacrifice, a symbolic observance of their submission to the divine. After this sober ceremony comes a bacchanalian masquerade which seems to violate every principle the sacrifice affirmed. Because of the apparent contradiction between sacrifice and masquerade, observers have described the two as entirely separate events. This book reunites them as a single ritual process within Islamic tradition.
