This book provides an excellent handbook to the Islamic movements in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya and fills a major gap in the scholarship on Islam and the Arab West.
In 1989 three Muslim schoolgirls from a Paris suburb refused to remove their Islamic headscarves in class. The headscarf crisis signaled an Islamic revival among the children of North African immigrants; it also ignited an ongoing debate about the place of Muslims within the secular nation-state. Based on ten years of ethnographic research, The Republic Unsettled alternates between an analysis of Muslim French religiosity and the contradictions of French secularism that this emergent religiosity precipitated. Mayanthi L. Fernando explores how Muslim French draw on both Islamic and secular-republican traditions to create novel modes of ethical and political life, reconfiguring those traditions to imagine a new future for France. She also examines how the political discourses, institutions, and laws that constitute French secularism regulate Islam, transforming the Islamic tradition and what it means to be Muslim. Fernando traces how long-standing tensions within secularism and republican citizenship are displaced onto France's Muslims, who, as a result, are rendered illegitimate as political citizens and moral subjects. She argues, ultimately, that the Muslim question is as much about secularism as it is about Islam.
What should be the place of Shari‘a—Islamic religious law—in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this ambitious and topical book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari‘a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies. An-Na‘im argues that the coercive enforcement of Shari‘a by the state betrays the Qur’an’s insistence on voluntary acceptance of Islam. Just as the state should be secure from the misuse of religious authority, Shari‘a should be freed from the control of the state. State policies or legislation must be based on civic reasons accessible to citizens of all religions. Showing that throughout the history of Islam, Islam and the state have normally been separate, An-Na‘im maintains that ideas of human rights and citizenship are more consistent with Islamic principles than with claims of a supposedly Islamic state to enforce Shari‘a. In fact, he suggests, the very idea of an “Islamic state” is based on European ideas of state and law, and not Shari‘a or the Islamic tradition. Bold, pragmatic, and deeply rooted in Islamic history and theology, Islam and the Secular State offers a workable future for the place of Shari‘a in Muslim societies.
Saddam Hussein and Islam, 1968–2003, offers an intellectual history of the Bathi Party from the 1940s through 2003. Amatzia Baram focuses on the transition from its early insistence on "unity, freedom, and socialism" to its Islamization by the time it was toppled by U.S. forces in 2003, a change largely impelled by the need to rally Iraqis against Iran during their war of 1980–88. Baram reveals signs that Saddam Hussein himself became some sort of born-again Muslim, though these signs are inconclusive. Sources include open source material but also internal secret files and highly classified audiotapes of Saddam Hussein that were made available to researchers at the Conflict Records Research Center at National Defense University and some documents at the Hoover Institution.
Western civilization tends to view secularism as a positive achievement. From this perspective, benefits of secularizing trends include the separation of church and state, the rule of law, and freedom from organized religion. In the Arab Middle East, however, Islamist intellectuals increasingly cite Western-inspired secularism as the source of the region's social dislocation and political instability. While secularism in the West led to the spread of democratic values, in the Muslim world it has been associated with dictatorship, the violation of human rights, and the abrogation of civil liberties. Islam and Secularism in the Middle East examines the origins and growth of the movement to abolish the secularizing reforms of the past century by creating a political order guided by Shariah law. Contributors explain the Islamic rejection of secularism as a failed Western Christian ideal and also discuss how secularization was pioneered by those who thought Muslims could only advance politically by emulating Western practices, including the renunciation of religion.
This volume combines ethnographic accounts of fieldwork with overviews of recent anthropological literature about the region on topics such as Islam, gender, youth, and new media. It addresses contemporary debates about modernity, nation building, and the link between the ideology of power and the production of knowledge. Contributors include established and emerging scholars known for the depth and quality of their ethnographic writing and for their interventions in current theory.
While Turkey has grown as a world power, promoting the image of a progressive and stable nation, several policy choices have strained its relationship with the East and the West. Providing social, historical, and religious context for Turkey's singular behavior, the essays in Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey examine issues relevant to Turkish debates and global concerns, from the state's position on religion and diversity to its involvement in the European Union. Written by experts in a range of disciplines, the chapters explore the Ottoman toleration of diversity during its classical period; the erosion of ethno-religious diversity in modern, pre-democratic times; Kemalism and its role in modernization and nation building; the changing political strategies of the military; and the effect of possible EU membership on domestic reforms. They also conduct a cross-Continental comparison of "multiple secularisms" as well as political parties, considering the Justice and Development Party in Turkey in relation to Christian Democratic parties in Europe. The contributors tackle central research questions, such as what is the legacy of the Ottoman Empire's ethno-religious plurality and how can Turkey's assertive secularism be softened to allow greater space for religious actors. They address the military's "guardian" role in Turkey's secularism, the implications of recent constitutional amendments for democratization, and the consequences and benefits of Islamic activism's presence within a democratic system. No other collection confronts Turkey's contemporary evolution so vividly and thoroughly or offers such expert analysis of its crucial social and political systems.
Are women in North Africa and the Middle East 'feminist'? Or is being a Muslim incompatible with feminism? Is there such a thing as 'Islamic feminism'? Through interviews with Moroccan activists and jurists - both male and female - and by situating these interviews within their socio-political and economic contexts, Doris Gray addresses these questions. By doing so, she attempts to move beyond the simple bifurcation of 'feminist' and 'Islamist' to look at the many facets of internal gender discourse within one Muslim country, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of the discussion on women's rights in the Muslim world in general. The status and the role of women is one of the most hotly debated topics throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and this is particularly visible through this discussion of what it means to engage with and promote feminist thought and actions in the region.
Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Maps -- 1. Introduction -- The colonial encounter: Civil state and religious society -- The comparative approach: Five case studies, one core story -- Parameters of analysis -- Ideologies of modernity -- Ideologies of Salafi radicalism -- Case studies -- Note on methodology -- Notes -- 2. Burkina Faso: Secrets of quiescence -- Future Burkina -- The birth of Burkina's religious balance -- Consensual secularism in a new society -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 3. Niger: Ebbing frontier of radicalism -- Future Niger -- Colonial Islamisation -- The state's own Islam -- Intimations of a religious society -- Intimations of a civil Islam -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 4. Senegal: Sufi country -- Future Senegal -- The colony: Sufi ascendancy, Salafi marginality -- Senegal's religio-political chessboard -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 5. Mali: On the edge -- Future Mali -- Islamisation and its discontents -- The road to crisis -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 6. Nigeria: Breakdowns -- Future Arewa -- Colonial revolution and ideology -- From persuasion to violence -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 7. Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index