The 1876 constitution and its reinstitution in 1908 have been acknowledged as landmarks in the historiography of the late Ottoman Empire. The promulgation of a constitution signified a critical political transformation despite the brevity of the First Constitutional Period (1876–78). During the next three decades of Sultan Abdülhamid's autocratic rule, the ultimately successful struggle to restore the constitution against the Sultan's relentless resistance became central to the political life of the empire. In 1908, the Young Turk Revolution inaugurated a decade of social and political change, the Second Constitutional Period.

“Conquerors, my son, consider as true history only what they themselves have fabricated.” Thus remarked the old Arab headmaster to young Saeed on his return to Haifa in the summer of 1948 in Emile Habiby's tragicomic novel The Secret Life of Saʿid, the Ill-Fated Pessoptimist. The headmaster spoke about the Israelis more in sorrow than in anger: “It is true they did demolish those villages … and did evict their inhabitants. But, my son, they are far more merciful than the conquerors our forefathers had years before”.

When the Arab world's authoritarian-populist/;etatist regimes first emerged, they were perceived by Marxist and modernization theorists alike as potentially forging the strong states needed by late developers to pursue national development. Three decades later, the conventional wisdom sees these states as obstacles to development and statism is in retreat. Even in Syria, where the Baʿth institutionalized statist ideology more effectively than elsewhere, economic liberalization has proved inescapable.

With the Islamist movement gaining momentum and recruits throughout the Near and Middle East and North Africa, it is vital that scholars and practitioners make an attempt to understand the objectives and strategies expressed by the groups within this movement. It is also imperative that we acknowledge that the Islamic resurgence is not a monolithic phenomenon, but is characterized by factions and voices that diverge on their approach to major themes such as the nature of society, the preferred relationship between Islamist activists and the political system, methodology for alleviating socioeconomic frustrations and spiritual laxity, and the temporal framework within which Islamist goals are to be achieved. The more “radical” or militant of these groups insist upon revolutionary change that is to be imposed on the masses and political system, whereas the more moderate groups, epitomized by the new Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, call for gradual change that is to be undertaken from within the political system and with the enlistment of the Muslim masses.