Customer Reviews

Why Muslims Rebel: Repression And Resistance In The Islamic World

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I read this book for a college research paper on religious terrorism. It argues that economic and psychological approaches are not enough to explain Islamic rebellions in places like Egypt, Algeria, Kashmir, Chechnya, etc. All these violent places suffer from political exclusion and indiscriminate repression, which are the main factors for violent dissent. The author uses lots of cases which cover many parts of the Islamic world, such as Pakistan, Tunisia, Jordan, Philippines, Tajikistan (in addition to the ones mentioned above). So, I felt I had a very good coverage and the argument was convincing because it applied to several countries. The book is very detailed and well footnoted using English, Arabic and French sources. The best part deals with anti-civilian violence (ch. 5) which most books I read do not address adequately. Overall, if you are thinking or writing about Islamic violence, this book makes an original argument and offers lots of illustrations.

This book makes the case that you can't understand Islamic violence without understanding the repressive environments of Muslims. It rejects several theories like economic impoverishment, ideology, or jihad as explanations of why Muslims turn to violence. When people are excluded from politics and repressed brutally, it makes sense that some will turn to violence. The book's limitation is that the author does not explain why Muslims turn against the West (especially the US) or why some repressive countries don't have violence like some of his case studies: Algeria, Egypt, Kashmir, Philippines, Tajikistan, and Chechnya. Having said that, it is still the best explanation I've read so far.

Professor Hafez does and excellent systematic job of explaining how Islamist political violence can grow and then explode in authoritarian Muslim countries. His "Political Participation" approach to social movements accurately analyzes how political exclusion, anti-system framing, and repression can drive peaceful political opposition to violent political opposition (a.k.a. terrorism). I highly recommend this book to fully understand political violence in Northern Africa (Egypt, Algeria in particular) and in the Middle East. Easy to read and to the point.