Islam Democracy And The State In North Africa

"Rarely is a collection of essays as coherent and of such uniformly high quality as is this one. This book makes a major contribution to our efforts to understand, and so competently interact with, the forces of political, economic, and social change in states where Islamic ideals form a vibrant component of the culture." —American Historical Review "Fielding a veteran team of American Maghribi specialists, this book discusses Islam and politics, human rights, aspects of political economy, and the international dimension of prospects for democratization in Islamic North African states. . . . All chapters advance useful arguments based on solid research." —Foreign Affairs In the late 1980s, misguided economic policies, bureaucratic mismanagement, political corruption, and cultural alienation combined to create a popular demand for change in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. It seemed for a time that a new and more open politics would transform the region. Instead, authoritarian states mobilized to repress the populist opposition led by politicized Islamist movements. Analyzing developments over the last two decades from the perspectives of political culture and political economy, leading American scholars provide insights into the region's continuing political crisis.

Examines political, economic, and judicial systems as well as human rights, and tools for good governance in the North African countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

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. }

This collection contains articles by highly regarded scholars assessing governance, democratisation and human rights in the contemporary Middle East and North Africa. It also assesses the role that Islam plays in these areas. In the spirit of the 50th anniversary year of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the authors examine the interrelationships among Islam, politics and human rights and evaluate each country’s contemporary record. The book contains in-depth articles on Islam and politics, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, the Gulf States, Turkey, Egypt and the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania). The authors discuss recent political developments in each of these countries and point out their accomplishments and shortcomings in the area of human rights.

No attempt to define the Mediterranean as a region can overlook the multiplicity of political, religious and social forces at work along its shores. Responding to changes in the global and regional environment these forces have interacted in complex ways, as evidenced by their impact on the social, cultural, and political life of the states comprised between the covers of this collaborative volume. The peculiarity of the Mediterranean, as has been noted time and again, lies in its geographical position as a “sea in the middle of the land”, where different religions and cultures vie for recognition and self-expression. In the wake of the popular uprisings that have inflamed the region, beginning in Tunisia in December 2010, a drastic reorganisation of their respective state systems is coming into focus in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Though their paths do not run along parallel lines, they share a common denominator: the determination of their people to become the masters of their destinies, and to do so by grappling with new forms of democracy. Almost five years later, after their rulers became the target of violent mass protests, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya are going through an exceptionally difficult transition, trying to accommodate their nascent constitutional forms to the new forces inspired by the Arab Spring.

Modern Algeria has been, in many ways, a harbinger of events and trends that have affected the Arab and Muslim worlds. The country's bold experiment in democratization broke down in the early 1990s, largely over the question of whether the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) should be permitted to come to power following its victories in local, regional, and national elections. A devastating civil war followed. Now that order has been restored and the country has a new government, questions about governance, Islam and international relationships are once again at the top of Algeria's political agenda. How these issues are resolved will not only determine Algeria's future, but will also have important implications for other states in North Africa and the western Mediterranean. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of North African Studies.

It is one thing to craft superb human rights tenets in a constitution and another to enforce such policies in practice. This book explores the contradictions between interpretations of constitutional tenets and the dogmas contained in the penal code of Islamic North Africa--particularly in regard to Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. Provided are brief histories of each country that connect the colonial past to present-day human rights records. The author also suggests ways in which to mitigate human rights infractions to advance peaceful coexistence that could promote political and economic development.

Investigating the connections between multiculturalism, minorities, citizenship, and democracy in North Africa, this book argues that multiculturalism in this region– and in the Arab world at large – has reached a significant level in terms of scale and importance. In the rest of the world, there has been a trend – albeit a contested one – toward a greater recognition of minority rights. The Arab world however, particularly North Africa, seems to be an exception to this trend, as Arab states continue to promote highly unitary and homogenizing ideas of nationhood and state unity, whilst discouraging, or even forbidding, minority political mobilization. The central theoretical premise of this book is that North Africa is a multicultural region, where culture is inherently linked to politics, religion, gender, and society, and a place where democracy is gradually taking root despite many political and economic hurdles. Addressing the lacuna in literature on this issue, this book opens new avenues of thought and research on diversity, linking policy based on cultural difference to democratic culture and to social justice. Multiculturalism and Democracy in North Africa will be of use to students and researchers with an interest in Sociology, Cultural Studies, and Political Science more broadly.