Customer Reviews

Muslim Politics

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Whenever someone comes to me wondering where they should begin when it comes to studying modern politics with an eye towards Islam, I inevitably point them towards this volume.

One of the reasons that I do so is that, not only are the two authors widely respected in the field, the both come from different backgrounds. Piscatori I would roughly describe as a political scientist known for his work on Islam and the modern creation of the nation-state. Eickelman is a long established anthropologist who rose to fame working in the Maghreb. The resulting integration of both the politcal and the anthropological is about as ideal as one can get. Since Islamism has the fascinating quality of not being merely political but also being a religious movement employing and revolutionizing the use of tradition and cultural icons of Islamicity, the perspective of anthropology as a part of any attempt to grasp its dynamics I have found to be crucial.

Here, you won't find the top 10 terrorist hit-list or a chart graph of all the members of Hamas, but you find a much more profound and broader picture of how tradition, religion and modern politics intersect with multifarious results in numerous global regions and some of the mechanisms at work. In general, it is an excellent work for gaining the tools with which to critically approach such phenomena in various Muslim societies across the globe.
all intersect

Finally here we have an introductory text to Muslim Politics that does not focus on the Arab world and treats what are in fact the more populous Muslim regions in South Asia, Southeast Asia and West Africa as the "Islamic periphery." Instead, the book recognizes these regions as being right at the core of Muslim politics. Readers are introduced to Muslim politics through the lens of a social science that treats Muslim politics as one among other political phenomena that can be studied and grasped with the tools and concepts of contemporary sociology, political science and the sociology of law. Readers are guided through the transformation of religious authority in the Muslim world, the emergence and political projects of Islamic movements, the diverse meanings of Islamic law and an Islamic state, the contextual notions of what is "the private" in Muslim societies, the transnational character of religious practice, and the use of Islam in struggles for political change, liberalization and democratization. A superb overview. Few other authors could provide it with such deep knowledge and such a wide variety of examples to draw on, from Senegal to Oman, Turkey to Indonesia, Turkmenistan to Tanzania, Lebanon to Malaysia. Emphatically recommended.

In Muslim Politics Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori have studied the idea of a Political Islam from a broad perspective. The title of the book itself betrays its breadth as it suggests, through the use of the plural 'politics' and the adjective Muslim - practitioner of Islam - rather than Islam itself, that Islam is a dynamic and evolving set of beliefs that have varied in time and space. This suggests that there can be no single explanation to account for the rise of Muslim politics and that a multiple criteria must be used to analyze the phenomenon. The book presents a number of arguments in its six chapters with examples from all over the Islamic world and among these are Tradition, Objectification and Fragmentation.
The authors challenge Modernization theory's contention that tradition is irreconcilable with social and political development and the idea that Islamic legal frameworks may not be altered as they have been conceived as a reflection of divine revelation. They also show that references to the Islamic past are used as rallying points or symbols from which to draw inspiration for change in the present. My main concern and the reason I have not awarded a full 5 stars is that the authors seem to neglect or have chosen to ignore the very real violence that radical islamists have caused. No mention of Algeria -90-present, Egypt and the numerous terror attacks of the last decade, the mindless policies these groups often support, the Taliabn and a host of other less than ideal versions - at best - and downright abominable conditions that prevail as a result of many Muslim Political interpretations.

One of the books that are responsible for accentuating stereotypes and supporting Islamophobia.