Tensions And Transitions In The Muslim World

Tensions and Transitions in the Muslim World provides an alternative reading of Middle Eastern politics and political culture by focusing on the dynamics of change, and examining the role of Islam in the emerging modern Middle East. Louay Safi contends that by focusing on radical and traditionalist Islam, Middle East specialists often overlook the liberal manifestations of Islam, which, though marginalized, constitute the driving force in the sociopolitical development of the Middle East. To capture the dynamics of progress in the Middle East, Safi examines the impact of the ideological struggle and intellectual debate between the forces of modernism and Islamic traditionalism on the transformation of mainstream society, and delineates the emerging sociopolitical outlooks and orientations, locked in a fierce struggle for the heart and soul of the Middle East.

9/11 and various acts of global terrorism from Madrid to Bali have challenged the understanding of academic experts, students, and policymakers, Muslims and non-Muslims. Critical questions have been raised about Islam and Muslim politics in the modern world. This work includes materials with representative selections from diverse Muslim voices.

This book presents a compelling ethnography of the changes Tajikistan faces at the turn of the twenty-first century as seen through the eyes of its youth. It discusses the ethnographic gaze on the tremendous cultural changes being played out in post-Soviet Tajikistan.

Contributors to this book are particularly interested in expanding our understanding of what helps, or hurts, successful democratic transition attempts in countries with large Muslim populations. Crafting pro-democratic coalitions among secularists and Islamists presents a special obstacle that must be addressed by theorists and practitioners. The argument throughout the book is that such coalitions will not happen if potentially democratic secularists are part of what Al Stepan terms the authoritarian regime's "constituency of coercion" because they (the secularists) are afraid that free elections will be won by Islamists who threaten them even more than the existing secular authoritarian regime. Tunisia allows us to do analysis on this topic by comparing two "least similar" recent case outcomes: democratic success in Tunisia and democratic failure in Egypt. Tunisia also allows us to do an analysis of four "most similar" case outcomes by comparing the successful democratic transitions in Tunisia, Indonesia, Senegal, and the country with the second or third largest Muslim population in the world, India. Did these countries face some common challenges concerning democratization? Did all four of these successful cases in fact use some common policies that while democratic, had not normally been used in transitions in countries without significant numbers of Muslims? If so, did these policies help the transitions in Tunisia, Indonesia, Senegal and India? If they did, we should incorporate them in some way into our comparative theories about successful democratic transitions.

As a leading movement in contemporary Turkey with a universal educational and inter-faith agenda, the Gülen movement aims to promote creative and positive relations between the West and the Muslim world and to articulate a critically constructive position on such issues as democracy, multi-culturalism, globalisation, and interfaith dialogue in the context of secular modernity. Many countries in the predominantly Muslim world are in a time of transition and of opening to democratic development of which the so-called “Arab Spring” has seen only the most recent and dramatic developments. Particularly against that background, there has been a developing interest in “the Turkish model” of transition from authoritarianism to democracy. The Muslim World and Politics in Transition includes chapters written by international scholars with expertise in relation to the contexts that it addresses. It discusses how the Gülen movement has positioned itself and has sought to contribute within societies – including the movement's home country of Turkey – in which Muslims are in the majority and Islam forms a major part of the cultural, religious and historical inheritance. The movement and initiatives inspired by the Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen began in Turkey, but can now be found throughout the world, including in both Europe and in the 'Muslim world'. Bloomsbury has a companion volume edited by Paul Weller and Ihsan Yilmaz on European Muslims, Civility and Public Life: Perspectives on and From the Gulen Movement.

The book examines the growing tension between social movements that embrace egalitarian and inclusivist views of national and global politics, most notably classical liberalism, and those that advance social hierarchy and national exclusivism, such as neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and national populism. In exploring issues relating to tensions and conflicts around globalization, the book identifies historical patterns of convergence and divergence rooted in the monotheistic traditions, beginning with the ancient Israelites that dominated the Near East during the Axial age, through Islamic civilization, and finally by considering the idealism-realism tensions in modern times. One thing remained constant throughout the various historical stages that preceded our current moment of global convergence: a recurring tension between transcendental idealism and various forms of realism. Transcendental idealism, which prioritize egalitarian and universal values, pushed periodically against the forces of realism that privilege established law and power structure. Equipped with the idealism-realism framework, the book examines the consequences of European realism that justified the imperialistic venture into Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America in the name of liberation and liberalization. The ill-conceived strategy has, ironically, engendered the very dysfunctional societies that produce the waves of immigrants in constant motion from the South to the North, simultaneously as it fostered the social hierarchy that transfer external tensions into identity politics within the countries of the North. The book focuses particularly on the role played historically by Islamic rationalism in translating the monotheistic egalitarian outlook into the institutions of religious pluralism, legislative and legal autonomy, and scientific enterprise at the foundation of modern society. It concludes by shedding light on the significance of the Muslim presence in Western cultures as humanity draws slowly but consistently towards what we may come to recognize as the Global Age. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003203360, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Conflict, Identity, and Reform in the Muslim World highlights the challenges that escalating identity conflicts within Muslim-majority states pose for both the Muslim world and for the West, an issue that has received scant attention in policy and academic circles.

This is not a book of history; it does not claim to cover every aspect of Islam religion. It confines itself to the search for the true mission of Islam and how that mission has been hijacked in the struggle of faith and power. This is the story of contest between religion and politics where politics was made a sacrament and religion abused. In describing this aspect, the historical part naturally cannot be ignored. This is not a book of religion either. Since religionand politics overlap each other in this study, theology and jurisprudence have their interplay also. The conflict within Islam for the soul of Islam continues. Will the struggle be resolved in the present and the foreseeable future? Or will it make life more difficult for the faithful? This book attempts to find the answers.