State And Ideology In The Middle East And Pakistan

Pakistan, which since 9/11 has come to be seen as one of the world’s most dangerous places and has been referred to as “the epicenter of international terrorism,� faces an acute counterterrorism (CT) challenge. The book focuses on violence being perpetrated against the Pakistani state by Islamist groups and how Pakistan can address these challenges, concentrating not only on military aspects but on the often-ignored political, legal, law enforcement, financial, and technological facets of the challenge. Edited by Moeed Yusuf of the US Institute of Peace, and featuring the contributions and insights of Pakistani policy practitioners and scholars as well as international specialists with deep expertise in the region, the volume explores the current debate surrounding Pakistan’s ability—and incentives—to crack down on Islamist terrorism and provides an in-depth examination of the multiple facets of this existential threat confronting the Pakistani state and people. The book pays special attention to the non-traditional functions of force that are central to Pakistan’s ability to subdue militancy but which have not received the deserved attention from the Pakistani state nor from western experts. In particular, this path-breaking volume, the first to explore these various facets holistically, focuses on the weakness of political institutions, the role of policing, criminal justice systems, choking financing for militancy, and regulating the use of media and technology by militants. Military force alone, also examined in this volume, will not solve Pakistan’s Islamist challenge. With original insights and attention to detail, the authors provide a roadmap for Western and Pakistani policymakers alike to address the weaknesses in Pakistan’s CT strategy.

Originally published: London: C.Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 2013.

The outside world now reaches into even the most closeted Muslim home through the various channels of the mass media, but globalization has raised many issues. This work captures and explores some of the debate, uncertainty and conflict generated as Islam moves into the 21st century.

The Muslim Brotherhood is often represented in mainstream media as a theocratic organisation that preaches Qur'an-based violence and is out to grab power in the West. As this book shows, such representations are wrought with prejudice and oversimplification; the organisation is in reality much more dynamic and diverse. Its goals, ideology and influence have never been static and vary greatly amongst its descendants in both Europe and the Middle East. Joas Wagemakers introduces the reader to this fascinating organisation and the major ideological and historical developments that it has gone through since its emergence in 1928.

Offers a pioneering study of state-making, religion, and development in contemporary Pakistan and its northern frontier.

This book examines the history of, and the contestations on, Islam and the nature of religious change in 20th century Pakistan, focusing in particular on movements of Islamic reform and revival. This book is the first to bring the different facets of Islam, particularly Islamic reformism and shrine-oriented traditions, together within the confines of a single study ranging from the colonial to post-colonial era. Using a rich corpus of Urdu and Arabic material including biographical accounts, Sufi discourses (malfuzat), letter collections, polemics and unexplored archival sources, the author investigates how Islamic reformism and shrine-oriented religiosity interacted with one another in the post-colonial state of Pakistan. Focusing on the district of Mianwali in Pakistani northwestern Punjab, the book demonstrates how reformist ideas could only effectively find space to permeate after accommodating Sufi thoughts and practices; the text-based religious identity coalesced with overlapped traditional religious rituals and practices. The book proceeds to show how reformist Islam became the principal determinant of Islamic identity in the post-colonial state of Pakistan and how one of its defining effects was the hardening of religious boundaries. Challenging the approach of viewing the contestation between reformist and shrine-oriented Islam through the lens of binaries modern/traditional and moderate/extremist, this book makes an important contribution to the field of South Asian religion and Islam in modern South Asia.

International migration is favoured by the governments of many poorer countries despite often well-publicized abuses affecting individual migrant workers. Not only is local unemployment reduced but also it is expected that the migrants will learn new skills, with many even becoming entrepreneurs on their return home. Meantime they are seen as a source of foreign remittances, providing needed capital for economic development. Such is the attitude in Pakistan from where thousands of migrant workers leave every year for the Gulf states especially. An anthropological study approaching this issue from a local (village) level, this book focuses on two areas of the Punjab. Describing the historical passage of rural life from pre-colonial times to the present, it shows how the rural economy of the Punjab was not transformed by the green revolution - on the contrary, it is still a subsistence economy. The resulting poverty combined with Pakistan's labour-market policies forces many Punjabi men to seek work abroad, in turn bringing changes to the economic role of the women left behind. Remittances from abroad have brought further changes on the economic and social life of the villages but not, as expected, to bring economic development let alone capital or entrepreneurialism to the area.