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"The Politics of Contemporary Islam"
In the last three decades, Islamism has become perhaps the most important political and social force in the Middle East and the Muslim world more generally. Calls for instituting the rules and regulations of the Sharia can be heard from Morocco to Indonesia, and Islamic norms and idioms have become part of the very grammar of politics.
Islamists, however, are a heterogeneous and fractious lot, ranging from those who advocate democratic politics to those who engage in armed struggle and violence, not to mention those who are Sunnis, others who are Shiites, and even some who deny all sectarian affiliation. With some notable exceptions (such as Iran after the Shah or Afghanistan under the Taliban), Islamists have remained largely in opposition, unable to control the levers of state power. By contrast with this failure, their success at influencing social mores, forms of political engagement and expectations has been significant, and perhaps nowhere more so than on such issues as identity, gender and forms of sociability and politics.
We hope to examine these and other questions pertaining to the contemporary politics of Islam.
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