Is it possible to speak of an “Islamist” foreign policy? The question really only makes sense since Islamist parties have had the chance to try their hands on the levers of power. While they were opposed to the notion, the response to the question can only come from their ideological corpus. There are certainly some specific ideas to be found in the texts and programs of the parties: develop a “third way” from the time when the Western and the Communist blocs between them dominated the geostrategic landscape; unite the Muslim countries with the long-term goal of reconstituting a Califate; and ultimately revive concepts elaborated by jurists of the classical age (dār al islam (house of Islam), dār al harb (house of war), and dār al ahd (house of truce)) that allowed for the Islamization of concepts of diplomacy and international treaties. This applies to the Sunni Islamists, as we will see, as Iran would develop its own model of diplomacy.

Apart from this ideological reference, the Islamist movement has never taken up a jihadist stance toward the West and always sought to maintain open channels of communication with Western governments. In general, it was the West that refused to regard them as legitimate oppositional movements, even though London had liberally granted them political asylum, particularly to individuals belonging to Tunisia's Ennahda and the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).

However, by now a large share of Sunni Islamist movements (and all those studied in this book) have had experience in managing foreign relations, even if ephemeral (Egypt), exercised in a power-sharing arrangement (Tunisia, Morocco), or, in Hezbollah's case, outside any state framework. It is therefore possible today to study actual practice instead of doing an often sterile exegesis of ideological discourse.

Interestingly, despite the great diversity of cases studied, we find a number of constants: This is what gives the book an overall unity. As may be expected, all the Islamist movements have adopted a foreign policy that is more pragmatic and moderate than their discourse lets on.