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Islamists from a Distance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2011

Bjørn Olav Utvik
Bjørn Olav Utvik*
Affiliation:
Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway; e-mail: [email protected]
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Extract

Research on Islamism needs to move closer to its object and to study that object more closely in its interaction with its environment. Despite great advances in recent years, academic literature on the topic still too often suffers from a double distancing: the researcher tends, first, to remain unnecessarily removed from Islamic movements as the object of study and, second, to study those movements at a distance from the society in which they grow and in which they compete for support.

Type
Roundtable
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 141 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

NOTES

1 This would often be most explicit with writers originating from Muslim countries. Cf. al-Tibi, Bassam, Islam between Culture and Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and al-Azmeh, Aziz, Islams and Modernities (London: Verso, 1993)Google Scholar.

2 Examples include Lacroix, Stéphane, Les islamistes saoudiens: Une insurrection manquée (Paris: PUF, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, Jenny B., Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky, Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and Political Change in Egypt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; and Zeghal, Malika, Islamism in Morocco: Religion, Authoritarianism, and Electoral Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener, 2008)Google Scholar.

3 For a fine example see Emerson, Michaël, Youngs, Richard, and Amghar, Samir, eds., Political Islam and European Foreign Policy: Perspectives from Muslim Democrats of the Mediterranean (Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies, 2007)Google Scholar.

4 However, important contributions have been made by, among others, Burgat, François, Islamism in the Shadow of Al-Qaeda (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2010)Google Scholar; and, for Egypt from a different angle, Sonbol, Amira El Azhary, The New Mamluks: Egyptian Society and Modern Feudalism (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

5 Tamimi, Azzam, Hamas: Unwritten Chapters (London: Hurst, 2006)Google Scholar.

6 Mitchell, Richard P., The Society of the Muslim Brothers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

7 Hegghammer, Thomas, Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lia, Brynjar, Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of Al Qaeda Strategist Abu Mus'ab al-Suri (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

8 See Schwedler, Jillian, Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Atasoy, Yildiz, Turkey, Islamists and Democracy: Tradition and Globalization in a Muslim State (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005)Google Scholar; and Deeb, Lara, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shiʿi Lebanon (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

9 An example is the grand Fundamentalism Project sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which produced, among others, Marty, Martin E. and Appleby, R. Scott, eds., Fundamentalisms Observed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and idem, Fundamentalisms Comprehended (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Other examples include Lawrence, Bruce, Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt against the Modern Age (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989)Google Scholar; and Kepel, Gilles, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in the Modern World (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

10 For an important collection of contributions, see Wiktorowicz, Quintan, Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

11 For a bold and thought-provoking example, see Hashemi, Nader, Islam, Secularism, and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.