Bassam Tibi takes a highly original approach to the topic of religion in world politics, exploring the place of Islam in society and its frequent distortion in world politics to the more radical Islamism. Reaching beyond traditionally politicised scholarship to provide a unique perspective on the place of religion and culture in global and local politics, this book examines the impact of Islam on 'civilizational' relations between different groups and polities. This comprehensive collection will be of great interest to students, scholars and policy-makers with a focus on the Muslim world. The volume moves on to address the ISIS phenomenon, a current urgent issue in world affairs, and closes with a look at Islamic geopolitics. It then switches to applying constructivism as a tool to understand Islam in world affairs and proceeds to address the issue of how the ethnocentric approach of Western academia has hindered our understanding of world affairs. The volume opens with the presentation and discussion of the international thought of a major Muslim leader, followed by a chapter that addresses the ethical practice of IR, from traditional pacifism to modern Arab political philosophy. This approach challenges Western-based and defined epistemological and ontological foundations of the discipline, and by doing so contributes to worlding IR as a field of study and practice by presenting and discussing a broad range of standpoints from within Islamic civilization. It shows how Islam is a conceptualization of ideas that affect people’s thinking and behaviour in their capacity to relate with IR as both discipline and practice. Islam in International Relations: Politics and Paradigms analyses the interaction between Islam and IR.
Muslims in Global Politics deepens our understanding of how modern ideas and norms interact with the traditions of the Islamic world and, in turn, shows how human rights advocates can provide an alternative to militant Islamist movements. With globalization, the demand for human rights continues to grow in the Muslim world, and struggles over modernity, authenticity, legitimacy, and rationality become increasingly important.
In each instance, he describes how conservatives, neofundamentalists, reformists, and secularists construct identity in different ways and how these identities play out in the political arena. In Muslims in Global Politics, Mahmood Monshipouri examines the role identity plays in political conflicts in six Muslim nations-Egypt, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Iran, and Indonesia-as well as in Muslim diaspora communities in Europe and North America. In all cases, understanding the dynamics of identity-based politics is critical to the future of Muslims and their neighbors across the globe. As Islam spreads throughout the world, Muslims living in their traditional homelands and in the Western world are grappling with shifting identities. In Egypt Islamists clash with secularists over religious and national identity, while in Turkey secularist ruling elites have chosen to accommodate Islamists in the name of democracy and reconciliation. This volume fills that gap, providing a compelling cross-national, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary analysis of Islam as a potent political force. Very little of the current literature deals with political Islam globally, and very few books go much beyond the Middle East and its terrorist groups. Reflecting the diversity and heterogeneity of the Muslim world, the book covers issues including: the challenge of Islamism to the Muslim world the use of Islam as a political tool on the international scene Islam’s contribution to the theory and practice of global finance Islam’s role in gender discourse Islam’s articulations in the Indian Sub-continent, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Arab world. The book critically examines some of the major events, movements and trends in the Islamic world over the past fifty years and their impact on the international scene. Driven by a concern to understand factors leading to, and the implications of, this heightened political profile the contributors go beyond polemics and apologetics.
The essays in this collection examine the emergence of Islam as a force in today’s international political arena.