Islamist Pluralism

Author(s):  
Avi Max Spiegel

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. The book attempts to unlock the incipient industry of Islamism. This is, at its core, a work of political sociology, informed, most of all, by scholarship in social movement theory, comparative politics, and the sociology of religion. To make the material accessible to a wide variety of readers, the author has aimed to write in a lucid, narrative style. In his nearly four years in Morocco, he witnessed firsthand the development of political Islam in one place. But these experiences also shed light on what is happening in other parts of the Arab world.

1993 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Walsh ◽  
Rex Warland ◽  
D. Clayton Smith

Author(s):  
Avi Max Spiegel

Today, two-thirds of all Arab Muslims are under the age of thirty. This book takes readers inside the evolving competition for their support—a competition not simply between Islamism and the secular world, but between different and often conflicting visions of Islam itself. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research among rank-and-file activists in Morocco, the book shows how Islamist movements are encountering opposition from an unexpected source—each other. In vivid detail, the book describes the conflicts that arise as Islamist groups vie with one another for new recruits, and the unprecedented fragmentation that occurs as members wrangle over a shared urbanized base. Looking carefully at how political Islam is lived, expressed, and understood by young people, the book moves beyond the top-down focus of current research. Instead, it makes the compelling case that Islamist actors are shaped more by their relationships to each other than by their relationships to the state or even to religious ideology. By focusing not only on the texts of aging elites but also on the voices of diverse and sophisticated Muslim youths, the book exposes the shifting and contested nature of Islamist movements today—movements that are being reimagined from the bottom up by young Islam. This book, the first to shed light on this new and uncharted era of Islamist pluralism in the Middle East and North Africa, uncovers the rivalries that are redefining the next generation of political Islam.


Author(s):  
Courtney Freer

This introductory chapter outlines where and how this book contributes original research to the existing scholarship on politics of rentier states in the Arabian Peninsula, as well as the academic work on political Islam through a brief literature review. This book will demonstrate that political Islam serves as a prominent voice critiquing social policies, as well as promoting more strictly political, and often populist or reformist, views supported by a great many Gulf citizens. As laid out in this chapter, this book demonstrates that the way that Islamist organizations operate in the unique environment of the super-rentiers is distinct. It also presents information about the methodology and sources used, as well as a detailed explanation for the use of country cases chosen. The chapter closes by describing the format of the book.


2021 ◽  
pp. 144078332199165
Author(s):  
Keith D Parry ◽  
Ryan Storr ◽  
Emma J Kavanagh ◽  
Eric Anderson

This article develops a theoretical framework to understand how sexuality can be institutionalised through debates about marriage equality. We first examine 13 Australian sporting organisations concerning their support for marriage equality and sexual minority inclusion before showing they drew cultural capital from supporting episodes of equality exogenous to their organisation, while failing to promote internal inclusion. We use online content analysis alongside the identification of institutional speech acts within policy to analyse results through three conceptual lenses: Ahmed’s institutional diversity work, Ogburn’s cultural lag, and Evan’s organisational lag, from which we propose a hybrid – organisational cultural lag – as a theoretical tool within social movement theory.


2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 122a-122a
Author(s):  
Fida J. Adely

The Arab Human Development Report 2005, the fourth in a series that has received much acclaim and stirred much controversy, takes up the issue of women's development in the Arab world. Through a careful reading and analysis of sections of the report that address education and economic participation, this paper offers a critique of the human capabilities framework that frames this report. I highlight critical tensions between the claim that providing education is an essential element of expanding choices and the assumptions embedded in discussions about women and education regarding which choices are acceptable and/or desirable. These tensions point to the persistence of values derived from the mandates of global capital, albeit in the new language of neoliberal choice, revealing that ‘human development’ does not represent a significant departure from earlier conceptualizations of development. I draw on my ethnographic research in Jordan as one example to interrogate such assumptions and to shed light on the ambiguities built into the educational project for young women today.


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