Religious Statecraft

Religious Statecraft PDF Author: Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545061
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 395

Get Book Here

Book Description
Since the 1979 revolution, scholars and policy makers alike have tended to see Iranian political actors as religiously driven—dedicated to overturning the international order in line with a theologically prescribed outlook. This provocative book argues that such views have the link between religious ideology and political order in Iran backwards. Religious Statecraft examines the politics of Islam, rather than political Islam, to achieve a new understanding of Iranian politics and its ideological contradictions. Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar traces half a century of shifting Islamist doctrines against the backdrop of Iran’s factional and international politics, demonstrating that religious narratives in Iran can change rapidly, frequently, and dramatically in accordance with elites’ threat perceptions. He argues that the Islamists’ gambit to capture the state depended on attaining a monopoly over the use of religious narratives. Tabaar explains how competing political actors strategically develop and deploy Shi’a-inspired ideologies to gain credibility, constrain political rivals, and raise mass support. He also challenges readers to rethink conventional wisdom regarding the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq War, the Green Movement, nuclear politics, and U.S.–Iran relations. Based on a micro-level analysis of postrevolutionary Iranian media and recently declassified documents as well as theological journals and political memoirs, Religious Statecraft constructs a new picture of Iranian politics in which power drives Islamist ideology.

Religious Statecraft

Religious Statecraft PDF Author: Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545061
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 395

Get Book Here

Book Description
Since the 1979 revolution, scholars and policy makers alike have tended to see Iranian political actors as religiously driven—dedicated to overturning the international order in line with a theologically prescribed outlook. This provocative book argues that such views have the link between religious ideology and political order in Iran backwards. Religious Statecraft examines the politics of Islam, rather than political Islam, to achieve a new understanding of Iranian politics and its ideological contradictions. Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar traces half a century of shifting Islamist doctrines against the backdrop of Iran’s factional and international politics, demonstrating that religious narratives in Iran can change rapidly, frequently, and dramatically in accordance with elites’ threat perceptions. He argues that the Islamists’ gambit to capture the state depended on attaining a monopoly over the use of religious narratives. Tabaar explains how competing political actors strategically develop and deploy Shi’a-inspired ideologies to gain credibility, constrain political rivals, and raise mass support. He also challenges readers to rethink conventional wisdom regarding the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq War, the Green Movement, nuclear politics, and U.S.–Iran relations. Based on a micro-level analysis of postrevolutionary Iranian media and recently declassified documents as well as theological journals and political memoirs, Religious Statecraft constructs a new picture of Iranian politics in which power drives Islamist ideology.

Mirror for the Muslim Prince

Mirror for the Muslim Prince PDF Author: Mehrzad Boroujerdi
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 081565085X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 490

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this volume, a group of distinguished scholars reinterpret concepts and canons of Islamic thought in Arab, Persian, South Asian, and Turkish traditions. They demonstrate that there is no unitary "Islamic" position on important issues of statecraft and governance. They recognize that Islam is a discursive site marked by silences, agreements, and animated controversies. Rigorous debates and profound disagreements among Muslim theologians, philosophers, and literati have taken place over such questions as: What is an Islamic state? Was the state ever viewed as an independent political institution in the Islamic tradition of political thought? Is it possible that a religion that places an inordinate emphasis upon the importance of good deeds does not indeed have a vigorous notion of "public interest" or a systematic theory of government? Does Islam provide an edifice, a common idiom, and an ideological mooring for premodern and modern Muslim rulers alike? The nuanced reading of the Islamic traditions provided in this book will help future generations of Muslims contemplate a more humane style of statecraft.

Afghanistan Rising

Afghanistan Rising PDF Author: Faiz Ahmed
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674971949
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Get Book Here

Book Description
Debunking conventional narratives of Afghanistan as a perennial war zone and the rule of law as a secular-liberal monopoly, Faiz Ahmed presents a vibrant account of the first Muslim-majority country to gain independence, codify its own laws, and ratify a constitution after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Afghanistan Rising illustrates how turn-of-the-twentieth-century Kabul--far from being a landlocked wilderness or remote frontier--became a magnet for itinerant scholars and statesmen shuttling between Ottoman and British imperial domains. Tracing the country's longstanding but often ignored scholarly and educational ties to Baghdad, Damascus, and Istanbul as well as greater Delhi and Lahore, Ahmed explains how the court of Kabul attracted thinkers eager to craft a modern state within the interpretive traditions of Islamic law and ethics, or shariʿa, and international norms of legality. From Turkish lawyers and Arab officers to Pashtun clerics and Indian bureaucrats, this rich narrative focuses on encounters between divergent streams of modern Muslim thought and politics, beginning with the Sublime Porte's first mission to Afghanistan in 1877 and concluding with the collapse of Ottoman rule after World War I. By unearthing a lost history behind Afghanistan's founding national charter, Ahmed shows how debates today on Islam, governance, and the rule of law have deep roots in a beleaguered land. Based on archival research in six countries and as many languages, Afghanistan Rising rediscovers a time when Kabul stood proudly as a center of constitutional politics, Muslim cosmopolitanism, and contested visions of reform in the greater Islamicate world.

Islam and Statecraft

Islam and Statecraft PDF Author: Jon Hoffman
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
ISBN: 0755655672
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Instead of religion influencing political outcomes, this analysis examines how politics influences religious outcomes. Dominant analyses examining the utilization of religion as a tool of statecraft in the Middle East remain overwhelmingly fixated on how Islam influences the foreign policies of different state actors – not how political considerations often influence the forms Islam assumes and how religion itself is often molded according to strategic considerations of political elites. That Islam, due to its “unique” or “exceptional” relationship with politics, drives political outcomes at the international level in the Middle East is a myth this book shatters by demonstrating how the political considerations of ruling elites – specifically, the intersection of domestic and foreign threats – influence and constrain the kinds of religious soft power strategies adopted by states in the region. This book develops a comprehensive analytical framework for the notion of “religious soft power” capable of incorporating power-based, identity-based, and ideational variables to examine how states couple religion with their broader foreign policy conduct. This framework is applied to the Middle East through the specific examination of three countries - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates - in the period following the Arab Uprisings to demonstrate how specific religious narratives, identities, histories, and ideologies are constructed by political elites in the Middle East for the advancement of what are inherently political objectives, namely the imperatives of regime preservation and power projection.

Islam, the State, and Political Authority

Islam, the State, and Political Authority PDF Author: A. Afsaruddin
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137002026
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
The expert essays in this volume deal with critically important topics concerning Islam and politics in both the pre-modern and modern periods, such as the nature of government, the relationship between politics and theology, Shi'i conceptions of statecraft, notions of public duty, and the compatibility of Islam and democratic governance.

Afghanistan Rising

Afghanistan Rising PDF Author: Faiz Ahmed
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674982169
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Get Book Here

Book Description
Debunking conventional narratives of Afghanistan as a perennial war zone or marginal frontier, Faiz Ahmed presents a vibrant account of the first Muslim-majority country to gain independence from the British Empire, form a fully sovereign government, and promulgate an original constitution after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Far from a landlocked wilderness, turn-of-the-twentieth-century Afghanistan was a magnet for itinerant scholars and emissaries shuttling between Ottoman and British imperial domains. Tracing Afghans’ longstanding but seldom examined scholastic ties to Istanbul, Damascus, and Baghdad, as well as greater Delhi and Lahore, Ahmed vividly describes how the Kabul court recruited jurists to craft a modern state within the interpretive traditions of Islamic law and ethics, or shariʿa, and international legal norms. Beginning with the first Ottoman mission to Kabul in 1877, and culminating with parallel independence struggles in Afghanistan, India, and Turkey after World War I, this rich narrative explores encounters between diverse streams of Muslim thought and politics—from Young Turk lawyers to Pashtun clerics; Ottoman Arab officers to British Raj bureaucrats; and the last caliphs to a remarkable dynasty of Afghan kings and queens. By unearthing a lost history behind Afghanistan’s independence and first constitution, Ahmed shows how debates today on Islam, governance, and the rule of law have deep roots in a beleaguered land. Based on research in six countries and as many languages, Afghanistan Rising rediscovers a time when Kabul stood proudly for anticolonial coalitions, self-determination, and contested visions of reform in the Global South and Islamicate world.

Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment

Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment PDF Author: Ahmet T. Kuru
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108419097
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Get Book Here

Book Description
Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.

The Hijaz

The Hijaz PDF Author: Malik Dahlan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190934794
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 590

Get Book Here

Book Description
Dahlan offers an alternative vision of Islamic governance through the history and promise of the Hijaz, the first state of Islam. The Hijaz, in the west of present-day Saudi Arabia, was the first Islamic state in Mecca and Medina. This new interpretative history offers a fresh vision of Islamic governance and law as a positive force for political reform in the Middle East and beyond. Applying key Islamic principles of public good to contemporary life, Malik Dahlan challenges two dominant narratives. He reclaims the development of Islamic statecraft as the wellspring of collective identity and statesmanship in the Arab world, simultaneously influenced and disrupted by Westphalian statehood models and Enlightenment notions of self-determination. He equally rejects the appropriation of Islamic governance and the Caliphate concept by both the post-modern, non-territorial Al-Qaeda and the neo-medievalist ISIS. Celebrating the history and untapped potential of a region where Arab leaders built the ideological foundations of an emerging polity, The Hijaz is a compelling alternative analysis of governance in the Arabian Peninsula and the global Islamic community, and of its interaction with the wider world.

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought PDF Author: Gerhard Bowering
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691134847
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 704

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In 2012, the year 1433 of the Muslim calendar, the Islamic population throughout the world was estimated at approximately a billion and a half, representing about one-fifth of humanity. In geographical terms, Islam occupies the center of the world, stretching like a big belt across the globe from east to west."--P. vii.

Islam, Literature and Society in Mongol Anatolia

Islam, Literature and Society in Mongol Anatolia PDF Author: A. C. S. Peacock
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108499368
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
A new understanding of the transformation of Anatolia to a Muslim society in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries based on previously unpublished sources.