Rethinking Political Islam

Rethinking Political Islam PDF Author: Shadi Hamid
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190649208
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Rethinking Political Islam offers a fine-grained and definitive overview of the changing world of political Islam in the post-Arab Uprising era.

Rethinking Political Islam

Rethinking Political Islam PDF Author: Shadi Hamid
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190649208
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Rethinking Political Islam offers a fine-grained and definitive overview of the changing world of political Islam in the post-Arab Uprising era.

Weapon of Peace

Weapon of Peace PDF Author: Nilay Saiya
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108474314
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
This book shows that attempts to repress religion produce the very violent religious extremism that states seek to avoid.

Egypt and the Gulf

Egypt and the Gulf PDF Author: Robert Mason
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783959940061
Category : Arab countries
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Egypt continues to be cultural and political beacon in the Middle East. Its control of the Suez Canal, cold peace with Israel, concern about Gaza, mediation and interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the marginalization of the Muslim Brotherhood are all points of significance. There is a close, and expanding, defence and security relationship between Egypt and the GCC states, most evident in the inclusion of Egypt in Saudi Arabia's new Sunni counter-terrorism alliance. The authors of this book contextualise historical linkages, and allies add to this the real postures (especially contentious relations with Qatar and Turkey) and study Egypt's strategic relations with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE in particular. The book's main argument derives from a complex web of political, socio-economic and military issues in a changing regional and international system. It states that the Egyptian regional policy under Sisi will generally remain consistent with existing parameters (such as broad counter-terrorism efforts, including against the Muslim brotherhood). There is strong evidence to support the idea that Cairo wishes to maintain a GCC-first policy.

The Failure of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab World

The Failure of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab World PDF Author: Nawaf Obaid
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440873976
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This book is an indispensable resource for anyone looking to understand the Muslim Brotherhood; Qatar's role in promoting the group; and the ideological, social, and religious factors that have led to its ultimate failure. The book begins by looking at the birth of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in 1928 in Egypt. It then traces its ideology and expansion via the various affiliate organizations in the Arab world as well as its international presence up to the present day. Throughout this historical analysis, evidence is presented linking the MB again and again to political violence and a lack of a coherent policy. The book weaves into this history the influence of Qatari support, a clarification of the division between true Salafism and the MB's radical ideology, an explanation of how Jamal Khashoggi was a living metaphor for this misunderstanding, and the role the MB has played in various revolutionary movements throughout the Middle East. The book concludes with a current geopolitical outlook on the MB itself and the Arab world in which it resides. The book is extensively sourced with first-hand primary source quotes from numerous exclusive personal interviews conducted by the author, with both experts on the subject and officials in the region.

The Other Muslims

The Other Muslims PDF Author: Z. Baran
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 023010603X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
This book is a unique collection of alternative Muslim voices, predominantly from Europe, who come from a variety of backgrounds - academia, theology, acting, activism - and who make a transformational contribution to the debate of the future of Islam and Muslims in the West.

Qatar and the Arab Spring

Qatar and the Arab Spring PDF Author: Kristian Ulrichsen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190210974
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Qatar and the Arab Spring offers a frank examination of Qatar's startling rise to regional and international prominence, describing how its distinctive policy stance toward the Arab Spring emerged. In only a decade, Qatari policy-makers - led by the Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, and his prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani - catapulted Qatar from a sleepy backwater to a regional power with truly international reach. In addition to pursuing an aggressive state-branding strategy with its successful bid for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Qatar forged a reputation for diplomatic mediation that combined intensely personalized engagement with financial backing and favorable media coverage through the Al-Jazeera. These factors converged in early 2011 with the outbreak of the Arab Spring revolts in North Africa, Syria, and Yemen, which Qatari leaders saw as an opportunity to seal their regional and international influence, rather than as a challenge to their authority, and this guided their support of the rebellions against the Gaddafi and Assad regimes in Libya and Syria. From the high watermark of Qatari influence after the toppling of Gaddafi in 2011, that rapidly gave way to policy overreach in Syria in 2012, Coates Ulrichsen analyses Qatari ambition and capabilities as the tiny emirate sought to shape the transitions in the Arab world.

Rentier Islamism

Rentier Islamism PDF Author: Courtney Freer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190862017
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
While scholars have long looked at the role of political Islam in the Middle East, it has been assumed that domestic politics in the wealthy monarchical states of the Arabian Gulf, so-called "rentier states" where taxes are very low and oil wealth subsidizes the needs of citizens, are largely unaffected by such movements. However, the long accepted rentier theory has been shortsighted in overlooking the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in the super-rentiers of Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. While rentier state theory assumes that citizens of such states will form opposition blocs only when their stake in rent income is threatened, this book demonstrates that ideology, rather than rent, have motivated the formation of independent Islamist movements in the wealthiest states of the region. In the monarchical systems of Qatar and the UAE, Islamist groups do not have the opportunity to compete for power and therefore cannot use the ballot box to gain popularity or influence political life, as they do elsewhere in the Middle East. But, as this book points out, the division between the social and political sectors is often blurred in the socially conservative states of the Gulf, as political actors operate through channels that are not institutionalized. Simply because politics is underinstitutionalized in such states does not mean that it is underdeveloped; the informal realm holds considerable political capital. As such, the book argues that Brotherhood movements have managed to use the links between the social (i.e. informal personal networks) and political (i.e. government institutions) to gain influence in policymaking in such states.Using contemporary history and original empirical research, Courtney Freer updates traditional rentier state theory and argues that political Islam serves as a prominent voice and tool to promote more strictly political, and often populist or reformist, views supported by many Gulf citizens.

Domestic Constraints on South Korean Foreign Policy

Domestic Constraints on South Korean Foreign Policy PDF Author: Scott A. Snyder
Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations
ISBN: 0876097336
Category : International relations
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
These essays support the argument that strong and effective presidential leadership is the most important prerequisite for South Korea to sustain and project its influence abroad. That leadership should be attentive to the need for public consensus and should operate within established legislative mechanisms that ensure public accountability. The underlying structures sustaining South Korea’s foreign policy formation are generally sound; the bigger challenge is to manage domestic politics in ways that promote public confidence about the direction and accountability of presidential leadership in foreign policy.

Faith in Numbers

Faith in Numbers PDF Author: Michael Hoffman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197538037
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Why does religion sometimes increase support for democracy and sometimes do just the opposite? In Faith in Numbers, political scientist Michael Hoffman presents a theory of religion, group interest, and democracy. Focusing on communal religion, he demonstrates that the effect of communal prayer on support for democracy depends on the interests of the religious group in question. For members of groups who would benefit from democracy, communal prayer increases support for democratic institutions; for citizens whose groups would lose privileges in the event of democratic reforms, the opposite effect is present. Using a variety of data sources, Hoffman illustrates these claims in multiple contexts. He places particular emphasis on his study of Lebanon and Iraq, two countries in which sectarian divisions have played a major role in political development, by utilizing both existing and original surveys. By examining religious and political preferences among both Muslims and non-Muslims in several religiously diverse settings, Faith in Numbers shows that theological explanations of religion and democracy are inadequate. Rather, it demonstrates that religious identities and sectarian interests play a major part in determining regime preferences and illustrates how Islam in particular can be mobilized for both pro- and anti-democratic purposes. It finds that Muslim religious practice is not necessarily anti-democratic; in fact, in a number of settings, practicing Muslims are considerably more supportive of democracy than their secular counterparts. Theological differences alone do not determine whether members of religious groups tend to support or oppose democracy; rather, their participation in communal worship motivates them to view democracy through a sectarian lens.

The New Spirit of Islamism

The New Spirit of Islamism PDF Author: Ezgi Basaran
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0755652967
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This book explains the aspirations and concerns of Islamist actors in the aftermath of the Arab Uprisings by looking at two sets of relationships between Turkey's ruling AKP and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and the AKP and Tunisia's Ennahda. It presents a unique analysis of the interplay between the AKP, Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood, characterizing the actors, the structure and the main features of the relationship and thereby illuminating a political confluence among these three critical Islamist entities in the aftermath of the Arab Uprisings. Existing scholarship has assumed that this relationship revolves primarily around an ideological Islamist agenda, however, this research demonstrates a more complex and nuanced situation. Ezgi Basaran puts forward that the interplay was not based on an aspiration of building an ideological Islamist bloc in the MENA region, but rather revolved around the concept of political success and had a strong neoliberal ethos. Basaran draws on data collected from over 60 interviews with high-level members of the AKP, Ennahda and Muslim Brotherhood to demonstrate how, in the hope of achieving success and legitimization, Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood have relied on the managerial prescriptions provided by the AKP. The contents of this success formula were derived from the AKP's experience as an Islamist party in power since 2002 and includes tactics on crisis evasion, legitimization, winning elections and maintaining power.