Download or read book Religious Radicalism and Politics in the Middle East written by Emmanuel Sivan and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores in a comparative perspective two fundamentalist waves that have rolled over the Middle East during the last two decades. Jewish and Muslim extremism have had a profound impact on the culture and politics of this important region. One thinks immediately of the Guh Emunism settlements on the West Bank, the Iranian revolution, and the assassination of President Sadat. The authors highlight various facets of the phenomena, such as Haradi Jewish ultra-orthodoxy, the transformation of secular Israeli nationalism by the Gush, Iranian attempts to spread the revolutionary gospel to the Sunni world, and fundamentalism as the spearhead of the national uprising in the Gaza. The introduction outlines what the extremist movements in both religions have in common, where they diverge, and how they are shaping the future of the Middle East.
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 Radicalism and Political Reform in the Islamic and Western Worlds written by Kai Hafez and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-24 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last decade, political Islam has been denounced in the Western media and in the surrounding literature as a terrorist or fascist movement that is entirely at odds with Western democratic ideology. Kai Hafez's book overturns these arguments, contending that, despite its excesses, as a radical form of political opposition the movement plays a central role in the processes of democratization and modernization, and that these processes have direct parallels in the history and politics of the West. By analyzing the evolution of Christian democratization through the upheavals of the Reformation, colonisation, fascism, and totalitarianism, the book shows how radicalism and violence were constant accompaniments to political change, and that these components - despite assertions to the contrary - are still part of Western political culture to this day.
Download or read book Faith and Power written by Bernard Lewis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-05 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bernard Lewis is recognized around the globe as one of the leading authorities on Islam. Hailed as "the world's foremost Islamic scholar" (Wall Street Journal ), as "a towering figure among experts on the culture and religion of the Muslim world" (Baltimore Sun ), and as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies" (New York Times ), Lewis is nothing less than a national treasure, a trusted voice that politicians, journalists, historians, and the general public have all turned to for insight into the Middle East. Now, Lewis has brought together writings on religion and government in the Middle East, so different than in the Western world. The collection includes previously unpublished writings, English originals of articles published before only in foreign languages, and an introduction to the book by Lewis. Acclaim for What Went Wrong? A New York Times Bestseller "Replete with the exceptional historical insight that one has come to expect from the world's foremost Islamic scholar." --Karen Elliott House, Wall Street Journal Lewis has done us all--Muslim and non-Muslim alike--a remarkable service.... The book's great strength, and its claim upon our attention, [is that] it offers a long view in the midst of so much short-term and confusing punditry on television, in the op-ed pages, on campuses and in strategic studies think tanks." --Paul Kennedy, The New York Times Book Review Acclaim for From Babel to Dragomans "Lewis has long been considered the West's leading interpreter of Mideast culture and history, and this collection only solidifies his reputation."--National Review "For more than four decades, Lewis has been one of the most respected scholars and prolific writers on the history and politics of the Middle East. In this compilation of more than 50 journal articles and essays, he displays the full range of his eloquence, knowledge, and insight regarding this pivotal and volatile region."--Booklist
Download or read book Religious Radicalism and Politics in the Middle East written by Emmanuel Sivan and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1990-08-29 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores in a comparative perspective two fundamentalist waves that have rolled over the Middle East during the last two decades. Jewish and Muslim extremism have had a profound impact on the culture and politics of this important region. One thinks immediately of the Guh Emunism settlements on the West Bank, the Iranian revolution, and the assassination of President Sadat. The authors highlight various facets of the phenomena, such as Haradi Jewish ultra-orthodoxy, the transformation of secular Israeli nationalism by the Gush, Iranian attempts to spread the revolutionary gospel to the Sunni world, and fundamentalism as the spearhead of the national uprising in the Gaza. The introduction outlines what the extremist movements in both religions have in common, where they diverge, and how they are shaping the future of the Middle East.
Download or read book Islamic Radicalism and Multicultural Politics written by Tahir Abbas and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2011-03 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The expression of an Islamic political radicalism in Britain has been one of the most dramatic developments in recent decades. Islamic Radicalism and Multicultural Politics explores the nature of this phenomenon by analysing the origins of Islam and its historical contact with Western Europe and Britain, and the emergence of Islamic political radicalism in the Muslim world and in the West. Tahir Abbas draws on historical analysis and contemporary case studies to explore the post-war immigration and integration of Muslim groups, the complex relations that exist between a secular liberal Britain and a diverse but multifaceted Islam, and the extent of social and economic inequalities that affect Muslims as individual citizens and in local area communities. He shows how violent extremism among British Muslims is in reality influenced by a range of issues, including the factors of globalisation and contemporary politics, media and culture. Analysing and dissecting public policy, Abbas offers suggestions for tackling the major social, political and economic questions facing British Muslims in the post-7/7 era. An important contribution to the study of religion, ‘race’ and ethnicity in modern Britain, this accessible work will be of interest to anyone working in the field of Islamic studies, sociology and political radicalism. Cover design by Mahtab Hussain, www.mahtabhussain.com
Download or read book Mandatory Separation written by Suzanne Schneider and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is religion a source of political stability and social continuity, or an agent of radical change? This question, so central to contemporary conversations about religion and extremism, has generated varied responses over the last century. Taking Jewish and Islamic education as its objects of inquiry, Mandatory Separation sheds light on the contours of this debate in Palestine during the formative period of British rule, detailing how colonial, Zionist, and Palestinian-Muslim leaders developed competing views of the form and function of religious education in an age of mass politics. Drawing from archival records, school syllabi, textbooks, newspapers, and personal narratives, Suzanne Schneider argues that the British Mandatory government supported religious education as a supposed antidote to nationalist passions at the precise moment when the administrative, pedagogic, and curricular transformation of religious schooling rendered it a vital tool for Zionist and Palestinian leaders. This study of their policies and practices illuminates the tensions, similarities, and differences among these diverse educational and political philosophies, revealing the lasting significance of these debates for thinking about religion and political identity in the modern Middle East.
Download or read book Rulers Religion and Riches written by Jared Rubin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-16 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to explain the political and religious factors leading to the economic reversal of fortunes between Europe and the Middle East.
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 Awakening Islam written by Stéphane Lacroix and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amidst the roil of war and instability across the Middle East, the West is still searching for ways to understand the Islamic world. Stéphane Lacroix has now given us a penetrating look at the political dynamics of Saudi Arabia, one of the most opaque of Muslim countries and the place that gave birth to Osama bin Laden. The result is a history that has never been told before. Lacroix shows how thousands of Islamist militants from Egypt, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries, starting in the 1950s, escaped persecution and found refuge in Saudi Arabia, where they were integrated into the core of key state institutions and society. The transformative result was the Sahwa, or “Islamic Awakening,” an indigenous social movement that blended political activism with local religious ideas. Awakening Islam offers a pioneering analysis of how the movement became an essential element of Saudi society, and why, in the late 1980s, it turned against the very state that had nurtured it. Though the “Sahwa Insurrection” failed, it has bequeathed the world two very different, and very determined, heirs: the Islamo-liberals, who seek an Islamic constitutional monarchy through peaceful activism, and the neo-jihadis, supporters of bin Laden's violent campaign. Awakening Islam is built upon seldom-seen documents in Arabic, numerous travels through the country, and interviews with an unprecedented number of Saudi Islamists across the ranks of today’s movement. The result affords unique insight into a closed culture and its potent brand of Islam, which has been exported across the world and which remains dangerously misunderstood.
Download or read book Religious Zionism and the Settlement Project written by Moshe Hellinger and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2018-04-25 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jewish settlements in disputed territories are among the most contentious issues in Israeli and international politics. This book delves into the ideological and rabbinic discourses of the religious Zionists who founded the settlement movement and lead it to this day. Based on Hebrew primary sources seldom available to scholars and the public, Moshe Hellinger, Isaac Hershkowitz, and Bernard Susser provide an authoritative history of the settlement project. They examine the first attempts at settling in the 1970s, the evacuation of Sinai in the 1980s, the Oslo Accords and assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s, and the withdrawal from Gaza and the reaction of radical settler groups in the 2000s. The authors question why the evacuation of settlements led to largely theatrical opposition, without mass violence or civil war. They show that for religious Zionists, a "theological-normative balance" undermined their will to resist aggressively because of a deep veneration for the state as the sacred vehicle of redemption.
Download or read book Russia and Islam written by Roland Dannreuther and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2010 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines contemporary developments in Russian politics, how they impact on Russia's Muslim communities, how these communities are helping to shape the Russian state, and what insights this provides to the nature and identity of the Russian state both in its inward and outward projection.
Download or read book Political Islam written by Nazih N. Ayubi and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Islamic theocracy is now firmly established in fundamentalist Iran, and waves of fundamentalism are sweeping the entire Islamic world, and its diaspora. This book examines the claim of those Islamists who contend that, as a belief system and a way of life, Islam carries with it a theory of politics and the state which should be applied unquestioningly. Ayubi traces both the intellectual sources and the socio-economic bases of Political Islam, arguing that it is a modern phenomenon, dating back only to the inter-war period. He describes its major proponents as urban, educated and relatively young people, whose energies were mobilised, but whose expectations were not fulfilled by the post-independence `populist' regimes in the Arab World. Islamic movements in six countries are studied in detail. Ayubi's distinctively broad definition of politics encompasses innovative material on sex and the family, and on the emerging alternative economic and social networks of Islamic banks, schools, and hospitals in the countries discussed. Ayubi stresses the traditional concern in Islam for the collective enforcement of morals, but argues that there is no case for the commonly held misconception that politics begins from theological principles in the Arab world: the historical connection between Islam and politics can be explained as an attempt by the rulers to legitimise their actions. He suggests that radical Islamists are reversing this position by subjecting politics to their specific religious views, so their movement is in some senses an anti-state one. He concludes by discussing possible intellectual responses to fundamentalism, drawing on the thinking of contemporary Muslim liberals.
Download or read book Life as Politics written by Asef Bayat and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to 2011, popular imagination perceived the Muslim Middle East as unchanging and unchangeable, frozen in its own traditions and history. In Life as Politics, Asef Bayat argues that such presumptions fail to recognize the routine, yet important, ways in which ordinary people make meaningful change through everyday actions. First published just months before the Arab Spring swept across the region, this timely and prophetic book sheds light on the ongoing acts of protest, practice, and direct daily action. The second edition includes three new chapters on the Arab Spring and Iran's Green Movement and is fully updated to reflect recent events. At heart, the book remains a study of agency in times of constraint. In addition to ongoing protests, millions of people across the Middle East are effecting transformation through the discovery and creation of new social spaces within which to make their claims heard. This eye-opening book makes an important contribution to global debates over the meaning of social movements and the dynamics of social change.
Download or read book The Islamic Paradox written by Reuel Marc Gerecht and published by A E I Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph concludes that, paradoxically, those who have hated the United States the most now hold the keys to spreading democracy in the Muslim Middle East.
Download or read book Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism written by John Calvert and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-22 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) was an influential Egyptian ideologue credited with establishing the theoretical basis for radical Islamism in the post colonial Sunni Muslim world. Lacking a pure understanding of the leader's life and work, the popular media has conflated Qutb's moral purpose with the aims of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. He is often portrayed as a terrorist, Islamo-Fascist, and advocate of murder. This book rescues Qutb from misrepresentation, tracing the evolution of his thought within the context of his time. An expert on social protest and political resistance in the modern Middle East, as well as Egyptian nationalism, John Calvert recounts Qutb's life from the small village in which he was raised to his execution at the behest of Abd al-Nasser's regime. His study remains sensitive to the cultural, political, social, and economic circumstances that shaped Qutb's thought-major developments that composed one of the most eventful periods in Egyptian history. These years witnessed the full flush of Britain's tutelary regime, the advent of Egyptian nationalism, and the political hegemony of the Free Officers. Qutb rubbed shoulders with Taha Husayn, Naguib Mahfouz, and Abd al-Nasser himself, though his Islamism originally had little to do with religion. Only in response to his harrowing experience in prison did Qutb come to regard Islam and kufr (infidelity) as oppositional, antithetical, and therefore mutually exclusive. Calvert shows how Qutb repackaged and reformulated the Islamic heritage to pose a challenge to authority, including those who claimed (falsely, he believed) to be Muslim.
Download or read book Religious Radicalism in the Greater Middle East written by Efraim Inbar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection offers a political analysis of religious radicalism in the Greater Middle East - comprising the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. The contributors present various conceptual perspectives including international relations, Middle East studies and political sociology.
