The Challenge of Political Islam

The Challenge of Political Islam

Author: Rachel Scott

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2010-04-23

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0804769052

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Based on Islamist writings, political tracts, and interviews with Islamists, this book examines Muslim-Christian relations in Egypt from the perspective of Islamic conceptions of citizenship, and provides non-Muslim responses to those views.


Pancasila and the Challenge of Political Islam

Pancasila and the Challenge of Political Islam

Author: Leo Suryadinata

Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 28

ISBN-13: 9814818674

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Islam has become an important symbol in post-Suharto Indonesia, and political figures or parties feel they cannot afford to be seen to be against the religion or be considered unfriendly to it. Islamism emerges to challenge Pancasila (or cultural pluralism) again. Islamists already challenged Pancasila soon after Indonesian independence. But during that initial era under Sukarno, this challenge was already under control. Under Suharto, Pancasila as an ideology was effectively used to govern Indonesia, and political Islam was suppressed. However, Suharto began to co-opt Islamic political leaders during the last decade of his rule. Religious Islam grew significantly during the Suharto era and would gradually transform itself into political Islam after Suharto’s fall. Nevertheless, the electoral strength of “Islamic political parties” remained relatively low. But since then, Islam has been used as an effective tool to undermine political rivals. The pluralists who are now in power continue to promote Pancasila, and combining with moderate Islamic organizations and through laws and regulations, have tried to hinder the further development of Islamist organizations. The future of Pancasila depends on whether the Indonesian government and other pluralist forces are able to control the Islamists and provide political stability and economic development in the country.


Rethinking Political Islam

Rethinking Political Islam

Author: Shadi Hamid

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0190649208

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Rethinking Political Islam offers a fine-grained and definitive overview of the changing world of political Islam in the post-Arab Uprising era.


The Future of Political Islam

The Future of Political Islam

Author: Graham E. Fuller

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2003-05-12

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9781403965561

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Graham E. Fuller brings a lifetime of experience in the Muslim world to shed light on how common, even universal, political behavior takes on a distinctively Islamic guise in the Muslim world. By examining the social, economic and political context, he explains that the struggle between the fundamentalists and liberals will determine the future of political Islam. This sweeping survey of trends in the Muslim world, from Morocco to the Philippines, explores the diversity of Islamic political activity and makes clear that Islamic political movements represent a broad spectrum of outlook and behavior. Whether traditional or liberal, these movements have become an important vehicle for the concerns, aspirations and grievances of vast numbers of Muslims worldwide and are a natural outgrowth of Muslim history. Fuller contends that while political Islam is the dominant intellectual current, a focus on radicalism and extremism blinds us from another trend: liberal political Islam. The issues are not what is Islam, but what Muslims want, and not whether Islam will play a central role in politics, but which Islam. As Islam has become the vocabulary for political and social expression, it has come to serve various agendas.


The Challenge of Modernizing Islam

The Challenge of Modernizing Islam

Author: Christine Douglass-Williams

Publisher: Encounter Books

Published: 2017-07-18

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1594039402

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The entire foreign policy and much of the domestic policy of the United States and other Western governments are based on the proposition that the vast majority of Muslims are moderate and peaceful, including those who are emigrating in large numbers to Europe and North America. But as Islamist groups and many mosques radicalize peaceful Muslims and appeal to the teachings of the Koran, Hadith, and Sunnah, it is imperative for moderates and reformists to articulate a vision of Islam and an exegesis of Islamic texts that can withstand the challenge of Islamists and the ulema who have declared the sanctity and immutability of the text. Instead, they must re-establish a firm foundation of Islam that is modernized, genuinely peaceful, tolerant, pluralistic, and compatible with secular governance, the freedom of speech, human rights, and equality. The Challenge of Modernizing Islam is the first major effort to provide that foundation. Veteran journalist Christine Douglass-Williams interviews foremost moderate and reformist Muslims in the Western world. She asks them tough questions about how they deal with problematic Koran passages, how they intend to get their message across to the Muslim world, and more. Their answers are revelatory, even in the ways in which they disagree with one another. Douglass-Williams has captured the Islamic Reformist movement in its full intellectual ferment, laying bare the tensions and triumphs of the Reformers. In the book's second half, she adds a crucial series of searingly honest and illuminating reflections on the challenges the reformers face, the chances they have of succeeding, and the implications of their struggle for the future of the Western world and of all free people. Illuminating, engaging, and thought-provoking, The Challenge of Modernizing Islam is an essential text for understanding the future of the United States and the West, and the implications of Muslim moderates' struggle for the free world.


Western Dominance and Political Islam

Western Dominance and Political Islam

Author: Khalid B. Sayeed

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1995-01-01

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 9780791422663

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This book challenges prevalent Western media and popular interpretations of Islam. Through a political and historical analysis of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan—countries that represent the religious, ethnic, and ideological spectrum of the Muslim world—it 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.


Islam and the Challenge of Democracy

Islam and the Challenge of Democracy

Author: Khaled Abou El Fadl

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2004-03-28

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 0691119384

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The events of September 11 and the subsequent war on terrorism have provoked widespread discussion about the possibility of democracy in the Islamic world. Such topics as the meaning of jihad, the role of clerics as authoritative interpreters, and the place of human rights and toleration in Islam have become subjects of urgent public debate around the world. With few exceptions, however, this debate has proceeded in isolation from the vibrant traditions of argument within Islamic theology, philosophy, and law. Islam and the Challenge of Democracy aims to correct this deficiency. The book engages the reader in a rich discourse on the challenges of democracy in contemporary Islam. The collection begins with a lead essay by Khaled Abou El Fadl, who argues that democracy, especially a constitutional democracy that protects basic individual rights, is the form of government best suited to promoting a set of social and political values central to Islam. Because Islam is about submission to God and about each individual's responsibility to serve as His agent on Earth, Abou El Fadl argues, there is no place for the subjugation to human authority demanded by authoritarian regimes. The lead essay is followed by eleven others from internationally respected specialists in democracy and religion. They address, challenge, and engage Abou El Fadl's work. The contributors include John Esposito, Muhammad Fadel, Noah Feldman, Nader Hashemi, Bernard Haykel, Muqtedar Khan, Saba Mahmood, David Novak, William Quandt, Kevin Reinhart, and Jeremy Waldron.


Islamism

Islamism

Author: Richard C. Martin

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2009-10-21

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0804773351

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As America struggles to understand Islam and Muslims on the world stage, one concept in particular dominates public discourse: Islamism. References to Islamism and Islamists abound in the media, in think tanks, and in the general study of Islam, but opinions vary on the differences of degree and kind among those labeled Islamists. This book debates what exactly is said when we use this contentious term in discussing Muslim religion, tradition, and social conflict. Two lead essays offer differing viewpoints: Donald K. Emmerson argues that Islamism is a useful term for a range of Muslim reform movements—very few of which advocate violence—while Daniel M. Varisco counters that the public specter of violence and terrorism by Islamists too often infects the public perceptions of Islam more generally. Twelve commentaries, written by Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals, enrich the debate with differing insights and perspectives.


Radical Arab Nationalism and Political Islam

Radical Arab Nationalism and Political Islam

Author: Lahouari Addi

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2018-07-01

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1626164509

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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.