Politics in Muslim Societies: What’s Religion Got to Do with It?

In Western scholarship, depictions of social and political life in the Muslim world oscillate between emphasizing the importance of religion and rejecting its relevance altogether. This chapter explores how—if at all—religion influences social, political, and economic outcomes in the Muslim world. Based on a narrow definition of religion as doctrine—that is, the set of beliefs and practices that delimit a particular faith—the authors agree with much of the scholarly community that religion is not the root cause of various social, political, and economic outcomes in the Muslim world. Their broader conceptualization of religion as both the beliefs and practices that constitute doctrine and the infrastructure that sustains these beliefs and practices enables them to adopt a more nuanced approach. The authors argue that doctrine is critical to understanding religion’s potential force, whereas infrastructure—specifically, social organization (i.e., institutions and actors) and social identity—is the key to understanding why, when, and where religion has agency to enact that force. The goal is not to make universal claims, but to understand the effects of religious institutions, actors, and identities in a given context. This approach can apply more generally to Western and non-Western contexts with distinct dominant religious traditions and help to integrate the study of politics in Muslim societies more fully into mainstream comparative analytical frameworks.