Political Culture in the Islamic World: The Socioeconomic Roots of the Islamic Leviathan

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 612-640
Author(s):  
Amir Abdul Reda
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
State System ◽  
Socioeconomic Class ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Public Opinions ◽  
Independent Variables

Abstract In this paper, the author explores how development affects public opinions on an Islamic Leviathan as an appropriate political system in the Middle East. He asks the following: In the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa), what influences political attitudes toward the Islamic Leviathan? To answer this question, he looks at the influence of seven independent variables on attitudes toward the Islamic Leviathan as a state system. The seven variables are (1) society’s overall development, (2) the socioeconomic class of respondents, (3) society’s corruption, (4) religiosity, (5) education, (6) gender, and (7) age. The author finds the observations needed to assess his theory in the Carnegie Middle East Governance and Islam Dataset 1988-2014 (CMEGID), which includes 15,194 relevant observations throughout the MENA region. His findings show that societies’ overall development has the most influence over Arab attitudes toward the Islamic Leviathan as an appropriate state system.

The Deferential English: A Comparative Critique

1971 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Kavanagh
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Cultures ◽  
Cultural Pattern ◽  
The Status ◽  
English Politics ◽  
The Way

ALL POLITICAL CULTURES ARE MIXED AND CHANGING. WHAT IS interesting in the English case, however, is the way in which a veritable army of scholars has seized on the deferential component. Other features in the overall cultural pattern have been neglected. This paper is devoted to an examination of the concept of deference as it is applied to English politics. In particular it will focus on the different meanings that the concept has assumed in the literature describing and analysing the popular political attitudes, and those aspects of the political system, including stability, which it has been used to explain. My concluding argument is that deference, as the concept is frequently applied to English political culture, has attained the status of a stereotype and that it is applied to such variegated and sometimes conflicting data that it has outlived its usefulness as a term in academic currency.

scholarly journals Why Islam (Properly Understood) Is the Solution

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 137-145
Author(s):  
Nader Hashemi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This paper is a provocative play on the famous Muslim Brotherhood slogan al-Islām hūwa al-ḥāl (Islam is the solution). While critics of the Muslim Brothers rightly criticized them for the simplicity of their worldview in thinking that religion was a panacea for all of the problems confronting Muslim societies during the late twentieth century, an argument can be made that religion does profoundly matter in the context of the struggle for democracy in the Arab-Islamic world. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, democratic transitions in North Africa and the Middle East will be dependent on democratically negotiating the question of religion’s role in politics. Here I provide some reflections on this topic with a focus on Tunisia’s transition to democracy.  

Middle Eastern views of the Gulf conflict and its aftermath

1993 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Joffe
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Government Support ◽  
The Political ◽  
Arab States

There can be little doubt that the conflict between the UN-authorized and US-led Multinational Coalition and Iraq at the start of 1991, as a result of the Iraqi Ba'athist regime's decision in August 1990 to invade and annex Kuwait, has produced profound changes in the political and diplomatic environment of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in Mashriqi and Maghribi political attitudes. The new atmosphere of confidence amongst the governments and peoples of the Arab states of the Gulf is clear evidence of these changes, as is the dejection felt in capitals such as Amman, Sanaa and Tunis where government support for the Coalition was less than wholehearted.

The Temptation of Graves in Salafi Islam

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ondrej Beránek ◽  
Pavel Tupek
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ibn Taymiyya ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
Islamist Movements

In various parts of the Islamic world over the past decades, virulent attacks have targeted Islamic funeral and sacral architecture. Rather than being random acts of vandalism, these are associated with the idea of performing one’s religious duty as attested to in the Salafi/Wahhabi tradition and texts. Graves, shrines and tombs are regarded by some Muslims as having the potential to tempt a believer to polytheism. Hence the duty to level the graves to the ground (taswiyat al-qubūr). In illuminating the ideology behind these acts, this book explains the current destruction of graves in the Islamic world and traces the ideological sources of iconoclasm in their historical perspective, from medieval theological and legal debates to contemporary Islamist movements including ISIS. The authors look at the destruction of graves in various parts of the Islamic world including the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, and trace the ideological roots of Salafi iconoclasm and its shifts and mutations in an historical perspective. The book contains case studies, among others, on Ibn Taymiyya, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, the Saudi religious establishment, Nasir al-Din al-Albani, and ISIS and the destruction of monuments.

Mediterranean Political Culture and Italian Politics: an Interpretation

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Barnes ◽  
Giacomo Sani
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
European Country ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Mediterranean Country ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Central Actor ◽  
Italian Politics ◽  
The Mediterranean

Both the classical Romans and the classical Fascists of Mussolini referred to the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum, ‘our sea’. The rugged peninsula of Italy cuts the sea in half, making Italy, at least by geography, a Mediterranean country. At the same time, it is a European country, a central actor in the long history of both the Mediterranean and Europe. When the center of Europe gravitated toward that sea, the peninsula was near the center of the world and Italy was a major link between Europe and the Middle East, North Africa, and the Moslem world. As the focus of Europe moved north and west, Italy became more marginal; but as a Catholic country it remained oriented largely to Europe. The Christian and Moslem sides of the Mediterranean developed in different directions.

Press Propaganda and Subaltern Agents of Pan-Islamic Networks in the Muslim Mediterranean World prior to World War I

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odile Moreau
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
North Africa ◽  
World War ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
The Press ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores movement and circulation across the Mediterranean and seeks to contribute to a history of proto-nationalism in the Maghrib and the Middle East at a particular moment prior to World War I. The discussion is particularly concerned with the interface of two Mediterranean spaces: the Middle East (Egypt, Ottoman Empire) and North Africa (Morocco), where the latter is viewed as a case study where resistance movements sought external allies as a way of compensating for their internal weakness. Applying methods developed by Subaltern Studies, and linking macro-historical approaches, namely of a translocal movement in the Muslim Mediterranean, it explores how the Egypt-based society, al-Ittihad al-Maghribi, through its agent, Aref Taher, used the press as an instrument for political propaganda, promoting its Pan-Islamic programme and its goal of uniting North Africa.

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