Islam Politics And Social Movements

Taken together the essays in this work not only provide new research essential to the study of Islamic societies and Muslim peoples, but also set a new standard for the concrete study of local situations and illuminate the forces shaping the history of modern Muslim societies. This collection is unique in its sophisticated interpretation of the social protest and political resistance movements in Muslim countries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors take two principal approaches to the study of their subject. Utilizing "new cultural history," they explore how particular movements have deployed the cultural and religious resources of Islam to mobilize and legitimize insurgent political action. Others rely on "new social history" to study the economic, political, and social contexts in which movements of anti-colonial resistance and revolution have developed. This work brings together contributions from specialists on Islamic North Africa, Egypt, the Arab fertile crescent, Iran and India.

This book looks anew at the vexing question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy, examining histories of Islamic politics and social movements in the Middle East since the 1970s.

Although regarded as a single community of Islamists, Islamic political movements utilise vastly different means to pursue their goals. This book examines why some Islamic movements facing the same socio-political structures pursue different political paths, while their counterparts in diverse contexts make similar political choices. Based on qualitative fieldwork involving personal interviews with Islamic politicians, journalists, and ideologues - conducted both before and after the Arab Spring - author Esen KirdiAY draws close comparisons between six Islamic movements in Jordan, Morocco and Turkey. She analyses how some Islamic movements decide to form a political party to run in elections, while their counterparts in the same country reject doing so and instead engage in political activism as a social movement through informal channels. More broadly, the study demonstrates the role of internal factors, ideological priorities and organisational needs in explaining differentiation within Islamic political movements, and discusses its effects on democratisation.

How do progressive social movements deal with religious pluralism? In this book, Timothy Peace uses the example of the alter-globalisation movement to explain why social movement leaders in Britain and France reacted so differently to the emergence of Muslim activism.

Foreword /Charles Tilly.-Introduction: Islamic Activism and Social Movement Theory/ Quintan Wiktorowicz. - 1. From Marginalization to Massacres: A Political Process Explanation of GIA Violence in Algeria / Mohammed M. Hafez. - 2. Violence as Contention in the Egyptian Islamic Movement Mohammed / M. Hafez and Quintan Wiktorowicz. - 3. Repertoires of Contention in Contemporary Bahrain / Fred H. Lawson. - 4. Hamas as Social Movement / Glenn E. Robinson. - 5. The Networked World of Islamist Social Movements / Diane Singerman. - 6. Islamist Women in Yemen: Informal Nodes of Activism / Janine A. Clark. - 7. Collective Action with and without Islam: Mobilizing the Bazaar in Iran/ Benjamin Smith. - 8. The Islah Party in Yemen: Political Opportunities and Coalition Building in a Transitional Polity / Jillian Schwedler. -9. Interests, Ideas, and Islamist Outreach in Egypt / Carrie Rosefsky Wickham. - 10. Making Conversation Permissible: Islamism and Reform in Saudi Arabia/ Gwenn Okruhlik. - 11. Opportunity Spaces, Identity, and Islamic Meaning in Turkey / M. Hakan Yavuz. - Conclusion: Social Movement Theory and Islamic Studies / Charles Kurzman

As North African, Middle Eastern, and Sahelian societies adapt to the post-Arab Spring era and the rise of violence across the area, various groups find in Islam an answer to the challenges of the era. This book explores how Islamist social movements, Sufi brotherhoods, and Jihadi armed groups, in their great diversity, elaborate their social networks, and recruit sympathizers and militants in complicated times. The book innovates by transcending regional boundaries, bringing together specialists of the three aforementioned regions. First, it highlights how geographically dispersed religious groups define themselves as members of a larger, universal Umma, while evolving in deeply embedded local contexts. Second, its contributors prioritize in-depth fieldwork research, offering fine-grained, original insights into the manifold mobilization of Islamist-inspired social movements in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, and Western Europe. The book sheds light on the tense debates and competition taking place amongst the different trends composing the Islamist galaxy and between other groups that also claim an Islamic legitimacy, including Sufi brotherhoods and ethnic and/or tribal groups as well. This book was originally published as a special issue of Mediterranean Politics.

How do progressive social movements deal with religious pluralism? In this book, Timothy Peace uses the example of the alter-globalisation movement to explain why social movement leaders in Britain and France reacted so differently to the emergence of Muslim activism.