Islam and Politics, Beverly Milton-Edwards, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004, pp. vii, 217.

The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter-Discourses, Larbi Sadiki, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, pp. vii, 409

These two books approach Middle Eastern Arab and Islamic politics from a post-modern perspective informed by new European and American scholarship on democracy and gender. Both authors tackle a range of issues that should have been treated as discrete topics. Beverly Milton-Edwards and Larbi Sadiki, the two authors, are trying to define Islam and politics not only in terms of the world after 9/11, but also in terms of the recurring and yet-to-be-solved issue of the role of Islam in the modern world and its relationship to politics.