Module Code: 6SSPP317

Political Islam 6SSPP317, Syllabus, 2025-26
Teaching Period: Term 1
Level: 6
Credit Value:15
POLITICAL ISLAM
MODULE CONVENER INFORMATION
Convener: Dr Michael Farquhar
Office: Bush House North East Wing 7.16
Email: michael.farquhar@kcl.ac.uk
Office Hours: See details on module page on KEATS
MODULE DESCRIPTION AND AIMS
This module introduces students to key debates about the nature and
characteristics of “political Islam”. While grounded in a political science
approach, it draws on a variety of other disciplines (including history,
anthropology, sociology, religious studies and international relations) to
provide a diverse set of analytical tools for making sense of this complex
and multifaceted phenomenon. The course is structured around a set of
themes which are central to understanding the relationship between Islam
and contemporary politics. The choice of themes takes in debates about
the role of Islam in regard to the state, political ideology, popular political
activism, and political violence. At the same time, the chosen themes also
account for the ways in which Islam may be implicated in politics as it plays
out in other dimensions of social life, including gender relations, the market
and identity construction. Along the way, the course will examine key
Islamist movements and currents, and students will be invited to engage
directly with works authored by influential Islamist thinkers of recent
decades. The course concludes by considering possible future trajectories
of political Islam, at a moment in history which has seen some influential
social scientists insisting that Islamism is essentially a spent project even
as a self-declared Islamic State came to rule territory spanning Syria and
Iraq. The module rejects simplistic readings of political Islam, instead
seeking to open up critical questions about the diverse, complex and
shifting ways in which Islam may intersect with politics in today’s world.
Using comparative contextual analysis this course explores the nature and
characteristics of political Islam, with particular reference to the
contemporary Middle East. Specifically, the module is designed to:
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• help students obtain a critical awareness of diverse approaches to the
study of the relationship between Islam and politics
• provide students with the ability to critically differentiate between
variant ideological currents of Islamist thought and to situate them
within contemporary intellectual debates and political contexts
• provide in-depth historical analysis of key Sunni and Shi’i Islamist
movements
takfir,
• situate these case studies within broader scholarly debates over
jihad,
revolution,
international
terrorism,
interventionism, political participation and democratization
Western
• examine and explore the relationship between Islamist ideology and
the state in comparative perspective, analysing state building failures
and challenges to the state by Islamist movements
• provide students with the intellectual tools to address the theoretical
discourse pertinent to academic debates concerning Islamism,
violence and political power
• continue to develop the student’s analytical, research and writing
capacities
• give students the opportunity to develop oral skills through class
participation, group work and presentations
LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of the module, students should be able to demonstrate
transferable intellectual and practicable skills appropriate to a level 6
module and in particular will be able to:
• critically assess the major scholarly debates concerning
contemporary political Islam in its militant and non-militant forms
• apply rigorous theory to comparative case studies of political Islam
• develop a capacity to ask relevant, substantive and probing
questions of political Islam in relation to the state, regional politics,
and Western policy and interventionism
• develop and strengthen a range of relevant skills – including
empirical and normative research abilities, the capacity to engage
critically with primary sources, and analytical and written skills –
through the discussion and presentation of original work
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• demonstrate a capacity to form opinions through comparative
analysis and discourse analysis regarding Islamism
MODES OF TEACHING, LEARNING & COMMUNICATION
The course is taught in the form of a one-hour weekly lecture and a one
hour weekly seminar. Attendance at both is compulsory. You are expected
to have engaged thoroughly with all of the required readings, and to have
reflected critically on their content, in advance of each seminar and to
contribute to group discussion.
Please check your personal timetable to see which seminar group you are
scheduled to attend.
KEATS is an essential repository for this course. On KEATS you will find a
copy of the module syllabus, required readings for the seminars, some
further readings and resources that may be useful for essays or seminars,
a section for announcements and a class discussion board. Departmental
communication will be via email, so please check your King’s inbox
regularly.
The module convener and GTAs will be glad to meet with you individually
during our office hours to offer advice on preparing essays, to give
feedback on your marked essays, or to discuss any other issues relating
to the module.
READINGS
Required readings will be posted on KEATS. If you have any difficulty
accessing ebooks or other online readings, please contact me immediately – broken links are not a valid excuse for not having done the reading if you
haven’t been in touch to seek a solution!
None of the readings included in this syllabus are beyond criticism and none
should be taken as offering unassailable truths about the history and
politics of Islamism; rather, they offer perspectives and arguments which
you can and should approach with a critical eye. Throughout the course,
you are expected to actively question and critique the premises, evidence,
arguments and conclusions that you find in the scholarly literature. You are
advised to refer to the “Critical Reading Checklist” posted on KEATS as a
framework for drawing up your own list of questions and critiques in relation
to each item on the required reading list, in order to help you to actively
steer seminar discussions. Students are also encouraged to read widely,
using the further readings and other materials.
I appreciate that most of you will be studying political Islam – and indeed,
any topic relating to Islam – for the first time. This isn’t a problem; the
module is designed to cater to students in exactly this position, whilst also
providing opportunities for those who do have some background knowledge
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to develop their thinking further. However, if you would like to expand your
background knowledge of Islam and political Islam, the following works
offer useful ways into the subject:
• Ruthven, Malise. Islam: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford
Paperbacks, 2000. (an accessible introduction to key themes in the
study of Islam; note that this is not an academic work and is not
suitable for citing in essays)
• Mandaville, Peter. Global Political Islam. London: Routledge, 2007.
(an accessible, textbook-style overview of key themes in the study
of political Islam)
• Volpi, Frédéric. Political Islam Observed. London: Hurst and Co.,
2010. (a valuable account of the diverse ways in which social
scientists have approached the study of political Islam, and how these
approaches have evolved in recent decades)
A number of blogs, or other websites with RSS feeds, offer useful ways of
keeping up to date with relevant academic debates and current affairs:
• Jadaliyya: Excellent online magazine on society, culture and politics
in the Middle East. It would be especially worth keeping an eye on
their Critical Currents in Islam page, which includes (amongst other
things) a weekly roundup of media stories relating to this theme.
• Jihadica: Strapline “Documenting the Global Jihad.”
• The Immanent Frame: Theoretically-minded blog on “secularism,
religion and the public sphere.” Contributors include many prominent
academic experts on Islam.
• The Arabist: On Middle East society and politics, sometimes including
analysis of Islamist politics.
• Informed Comment: On Middle East society and politics, sometimes
including analysis of Islamist politics. Particularly good on Iran.
• Al Monitor: Middle East news. (www.al-monitor.com)
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MODULE SCHEDULE

Session Topic
Week 1

Conceptualising Political Islam
Week 2

The Rise of Political Islam (Case Study: The
Egyptian Muslim Brothers)

Week 3

Islamic States (Case Study: The Islamic Republic of
Iran)

Week 4

Transnationalism (Case Study: Salafism)

Week 5

Electoral Politics
Week 6

READING WEEK – no lecture or seminars
Week 7

Islamism in Geopolitics (Case Study: al-Qaeda and
the “War on Terror”)

Week 8

Political Violence (Case Study: Islamic State)
Week 9

Gender
Week 10

Sectarianisation (Case Study: “The Sunni-Shi’a
Divide”)
Week 11

Towards Post-Islamism?

MODES OF ASSESSMENT
Assessment will be based on:
• Seminar attendance and participation (counts towards 10%
of your final grade). Seminar participation will be assessed
according to the “Department of Political Economy Participation
Marking Criteria”, which are available on the module page on KEATS.
It is important to note that any unexcused absence will result in a
grade of 0 for the week in question. If you need to miss a seminar,
please email your seminar leader in advance or as soon as possible
afterwards with a brief explanation for your absence.
• A 2,500-word essay (counts towards 90% of your final grade).
In preparing your final essay, you must select one of the essay
questions from the list included in this syllabus (see below). To check
the deadline for this assessment, please consult the “Module
Assessment” area of the module KEATS page. You will also find other
useful materials there, including an “Essay FAQs” document which
includes responses to common questions and guidance on essay
writing.

In advance of submitting your final essay, you will be invited to submit a
non-assessed 500-word formative essay. This is an important
opportunity for you to outline your ideas for the final essay and receive
feedback. You may present the formative essay in prose or bullet points.
You will benefit much more from this exercise if you are able to include
thorough references to readings. That said, I appreciate that when you
submit your formative essay, you may not yet have had the time to do all
of your reading.
In preparing your coursework, please note the following:
• Essay questions can be found below.
• Formative and summative assignments must be submitted on KEATS.
Please familiarise yourself with the submission process on KEATS
before the deadline. When submitting your coursework, please
include a completed coursework cover sheet (available on KEATS) as
the first page of the document.
• You must submit your work on time. For policies regarding late
submission, please consult the DPE Undergraduate Student
Handbook (accessible via a link in the “Course Overview” section of
the module KEATS page).
• You must use a recognized citation system.
• Essays must contain a bibliography of works cited, formatted in
accordance with your chosen citation system.
• Your essay should not exceed the word limit. The department’s word
count policy can be found in the DPE Undergraduate Student
Handbook linked on KEATS. Please check details, such as the
inclusion of footnotes in the word count.
• Make sure you understand the College rules regarding plagiarism. A
plagiarism detection system (Turnitin) is built into the KEATS
submission process. Detailed information about plagiarism is
available on the College website and in the DPE Undergraduate
Student Handbook.
• Coursework will be assessed with reference to the King’s
Undergraduate Generic Marking Criteria and the Department of
Political Economy Marking Criteria (available in the “Assessment”
section of the module KEATS page).
• Any mitigating circumstances request must be submitted through the
online system. For details, see
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https://www.kcl.ac.uk/aboutkings/quality/academic/assessment/mi
tigatingcircumstances/index
• Copies of marking criteria documents, information about referencing,
and DPE policies on word count, late submission and other such
matters are available in the DPE Undergraduate Student Handbook
(available in the “Course Overview” section of the KEATS page).
***Please note that if you do not attend a seminar and do not
contact the module convener to explain your absence, your
attendance and participation will be marked as 0 for that week.***
ESSAY QUESTIONS
Note that each of these questions corresponds to a topic on the module,
in the same order as they are taught on the module. Below, you will find
a full reading list (including required and further readings) for each topic.
• How useful are rational actor approaches as a framework for
understanding Islamist activism?
• What explains the rise of organised political Islam in Egypt in the
interwar period?
• What have been the most important challenges faced by actors who
have aspired to establish “Islamic states” in the modern period?
Discuss with reference to one or more case studies.
• How have transnational connections contributed to shaping modern
Salafism?
• Does participation in elections have the effect of “moderating”
Islamist movements?
• What is the relationship, if any, between “global jihad” and
globalization?
• Is there anything exceptional about the ways in which Islamist
movements employ violence? Discuss with reference to Islamic
State.
• How should we evaluate women’s agency within the context of
Islamist political projects?
• Are sectarian dimensions of contemporary Islamist politics a
manifestation of age-old hatreds?
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• Is the post-Islamism thesis still valid?
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LECTURE INFORMATION & READING LISTS
WEEK 1
CONCEPTUALISING POLITICAL ISLAM
How should we define “political Islam”? What role does religion play in
motivating or shaping Islamist politics? What role does “rationality” play
in motivating or shaping Islamist politics?
REQUIRED READING
Ismail, Salwa. “Is There an Islamic Conception of Politics?” In What Is
Politics?: The Activity and Its Study, edited by Adrian Leftwich, 147–65.
Oxford: Polity, 2004.
Wiktorowicz, Quintan, and Karl Kaltenthaler. “The Rationality of Radical
Islam.” Political Science Quarterly 131, no. 2 (2016): 421–48.
Euben, Roxanne. Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the
Limits of Modern Rationalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1999. Chapter 2, “Projections and Refractions: Islamic Fundamentalism
and Modern Rationalist Discourse”
Siddiqui, Sohaira. “Beyond Authenticity: ISIS and the Islamic Legal
Tradition.” Jadaliyya, February 24, 2015.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/20944/beyond-authenticity_isis
and-the-islamic-legal-tra.
FURTHER READING
Anjum, Ovamir. 2007. “Islam as a Discursive Tradition: Talal Asad and
His Interlocutors.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the
Middle East 27 (3): 656–72.
Asad, Talal. The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam. Occasional Papers
Series. Washington, DC: Georgetown University, Center for Contemporary
Arab Studies, 1986.
al-Azm, Sadiq Jalal. “Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse.” Europe
Solidaire Sans Frontières, October 1, 1980. http://www.europe
solidaire.org/spip.php?article20360.
Bayat, Asef. “Islamism and Social Movement Theory.” Third World
Quarterly 26, no. 6 (2005): 891–908.
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Çavdar, Gamze. “Islamist Rationality: An Assessment of the Rational
Choice Approach.” Politics and Religion 5, no. 3 (December 2012): 584
608.
Eickelman, Dale F., and James P. Piscatori. Muslim Politics. 2nd ed.
Princeton, N.J.; Princeton University Press, 2004.
Euben, Roxanne. “When Worldviews Collide: Conflicting Assumptions
about Human Behavior Held by Rational Actor Theory and Islamic
Fundamentalism.” Political Psychology 16, no. 1 (1995): 157–78.
“Evolving Methodologies in the Study of Islamism.” POMEPS Studies.
Washington: Project on Middle East Political Science, March 7, 2016.
https://pomeps.org/wp
content/uploads/2016/03/POMEPS_Studies_17_Methods_Web.pdf.
Gilsenan, Michael. Recognizing Islam: Religion and Society in the Modern
Middle East. Rev. ed. London: I.B. Tauris, 2008.
Hegghammer, Thomas. “Jihadi-Salafis or Revolutionaries? On Religion and
Politics in the Study of Militant Islamism.” In Global Salafism: Islam’s New
Religious Movement, edited by Roel Meijer, 244-266. London: Hurst & Co,
2009.
Hirschkind, Charles. “What Is Political Islam?” Middle East Report, no. 205
(October 1997): 12.
Ismail, Salwa. Rethinking Islamist Politics: Culture, the State and
Islamism. London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003. Chapter 1, “The Study of
Islamism Revisited.”
Kurzman, Charles. 2019. ‘Sociologies of Islam’. Annual Review of
Sociology 45(1): 265–77.
Meijer, Roel. “Taking the Islamist Movement Seriously: Social Movement
Theory and the Islamist Movement.” International Review of Social
History 50, no. 2 (August 2005): 279–91.
Rock-Singer, Aaron. “Practices of Piety: An Alternative Approach to the
Study of Islamic Movements.” Religions 11, no. 10 (October 2020): 520.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2003.
Sarhan, Saʻud ibn Salih, ed. Political Quietism in Islam: Sunni and Shiʻi
Practice and Thought. Bloomsbury: London, 2020.
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Sayyid, S. Recalling the Caliphate: Decolonisation and World Order.
Second edition. London: Hurst & Company, 2022.
Volpi, Frédéric. Political Islam Observed. London: Hurst and Co., 2010.
Including Ch. 2, “From Criticizing Orientalism to Framing Islamism”.
Wagemakers, Joas. “Making Definitional Sense of Islamism.” Orient,
2021.
Wiktorowicz, Quintan. “Introduction: Islamic Activism and Social
Movement Theory.” In Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory
Approach, edited by Quintan Wiktorowicz. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2004.
WEEK 2
THE RISE OF POLITICAL ISLAM (CASE STUDY: THE EGYPTIAN
MUSLIM BROTHERS)
What factors contributed to the rise of organized political Islam in
interwar Egypt? To what extent was it an outcome of scholarly debates
about Islamic reform? To what extent was it a product of wider social and
political transformations? How did the Egyptian Muslim Brothers
transform from a small community of activists into a mass movement?
REQUIRED READING
Commins, David. “Hasan Al-Banna.” In Pioneers of Islamic Revival, edited
by Ali Rahnama. London: Zed, 2005.
Brooke, Steven, and Neil Ketchley. “Social and Institutional Origins of
Political Islam.” American Political Science Review, February 2018, 1–19.
Munson, Ziad. “Islamic Mobilization: Social Movement Theory and the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.” The Sociological Quarterly 42, no. 4
(October 1, 2001): 487–510.
Primary source: al-Banna, Hasan. “Toward the Light.” In Princeton
Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from Al-Banna to Bin
Laden, edited by Roxanne Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, 56–78.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
FURTHER READING
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al-Banna, Hasan. Five Tracts of Hasan al-Banna (1906–1949). Translated
from the Arabic and annotated by Charles Wendell. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1978.
Baron, Beth. The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of
the Muslim Brotherhood. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014.
Beinin, Joel, and Zachary Lockman. Workers on the Nile: Nationalism,
Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954. Cairo:
American University in Cairo Press, 1998. Ch. XI, “The Muslim Brothers
and the Egyptian Workers’ Movement”.
Cole, Juan. “Printing and Urban Islam in the Mediterranean World, 1890
1920.” In Modernity and Culture from the Mediterranean to the Indian
Ocean, edited by Leila Tarazi Fawaz and C. A. Bayly, 344-364. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2002.
Gershoni, Israel, and James P. Jankowski. Redefining the Egyptian Nation,
1930-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Ch. 4,
“Egyptian Islamic Nationalism”.
Ghyoot, Mathias. 2025. Brothers Behind Bars: A History of the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt, 1948-1975. Oxford University Press.
Iqtidar, Humeira. “Conservative Anti-Colonialism: Maududi, Marx and
Social Equality.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 32, no. 2 (April
2022): 295–310.
Ketchley, Neil, Steven Brooke, and Brynjar Lia. “Who Supported the Early
Muslim Brotherhood?” Politics and Religion 15, no. 2 (June 2022): 388
416.
Kourgiotis, Panos. “Understanding Egyptian Capitalism through the
Muslim Brotherhood’s Eyes: The Quest for an ‘Islamic Economy’ in the
1940s and Its Ideological and Social Impact.” British Journal of Middle
Eastern Studies 45, no. 3 (May 27, 2018): 464–79.
Kurzman, Charles. Modernist Islam, 1840-1940: A Sourcebook. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002. “Introduction: The Modernist Islamic
Movement”, pp. 3-27.
Langohr, Vickie. 2005. “Colonial Education Systems and the Spread of
Local Religious Movements: The Cases of British Egypt and Punjab.”
Comparative Studies in Society and History 47 (1): 161–89.
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Lefevre, Raphael. Ashes of Hama: The Perilous History of Syria’s Muslim
Brotherhood. London: Hurst, 2013. Part I, “Politicizing Islam (1860
1963)”.
Lia, Brynjar. The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt: The Rise of an
Islamic Mass Movement 1928-1942. Reading: Garnet, 1998.
Mandaville, Peter. Global Political Islam. London: Routledge, 2007. Ch. 3,
“State Formation and the Making of Islamism”.
Mitchell, Richard. The Society of the Muslim Brothers. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993.
Moaddel, Mansoor. “Discursive Pluralism and Islamic Modernism in
Egypt.” Arab Studies Quarterly 24, no. 1 (2002): 1–29.
Moaddel, Mansoor. Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism:
Episode and Discourse. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005.
Robinson, Francis. “Technology and Religious Change: Islam and the
Impact of Print.” Modern Asian Studies 27, no. 1 (1993): 229–51.
WEEK 3
ISLAMIC STATES (CASE STUDY: THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN)
What was distinctively “Islamic” about Khomeini’s theory of the state?
What distinguishes self-proclaimed “Islamic states” from other
contemporary states? How do self-proclaimed “Islamic states” differ from
each other and what do they have in common? Is it analytically useful to
categorise Iran as an “Islamic state”? What aspects of Iranian politics can
this help to illuminate and what may it obscure?
Required Reading
Ayoob, Mohammed. The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and
Politics in the Muslim World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2007. Chapter 3, “Self-Proclaimed Islamic States.”
Abrahamian, Ervand. Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic.
University of California Press, 1993. Chap. 1, “Fundamentalism or
Populism?”
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Tabaar, Mohammad. Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. Read Ch. 8, “The Factional
Battle Over Khomeini’s Velayat-e Faqih”.
Primary source: Khomeini, Ruhollah. “Islamic Government.” In
Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from Al
Banna to Bin Laden, edited by Roxanne Euben and Muhammad Qasim
Zaman, 163–80. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Further Reading
Adelkhah, Fariba. Being Modern in Iran. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2004.
Adib-Moghaddam, Arshin. A Critical Introduction to Khomeini. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Ahmad, Irfan. “Genealogy of the Islamic State: Reflections on Maududi’s
Political Thought and Islamism.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute 15 (May 1, 2009): S145–62.
Alimagham, Pouya. Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green
Uprisings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Arjomand, Said Amir. “Shi’ite Jurisprudence and Constitution Making in
the Islamic Republic of Iran.” In Fundamentalism and the State, edited by
Martin Marty and S. Appleby. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993.
Al-Atawneh, Muhammad. “Is Saudi Arabia a Theocracy? Religion and
Governance in Contemporary Saudi Arabia.” Middle Eastern Studies 45,
no. 5 (September 1, 2009): 721–37.
Bohdan, Siarhei. “‘They Were Going Together with the Ikhwan’: The
Influence of Muslim Brotherhood Thinkers on Shi‘i Islamists during the
Cold War.” The Middle East Journal 74, no. 2 (2020): 243–62.
Cole, Juan Ricardo. Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and
History of Shi’ite Islam. London: I.B. Tauris, 2002. Ch. 11, “The Modernity
of Theocracy”.
Crone, Manni. “The Disenchantment of an Islamic State: Perspectives on
Secularism in Iran.” Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 19, no. 2
(2006): 29-42.
Hallaq, Wael. The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral
Predicament. New York N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2012. If you read
Hallaq’s book, I’d strongly encourage you to also consult Perspectives on
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Politics 12, no. 4 (2014). Here, you’ll find a section titled “Review
Symposium: The Impossible State” which includes three short pieces by
Iza Hussin, Nathan J. Brown and Neguin Yavari reflecting on Hallaq’s
arguments.
Iqtidar, Humeira. “Theorizing Popular Sovereignty in the Colony: Abul Aʿla
Maududi’s ‘Theodemocracy.’” The Review of Politics 82, no. 4 (ed 2020):
595–617.
Kurzman, Charles. “Critics within: Islamic Scholars’ Protests against the
Islamic State in Iran.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and
Society 15, no. 2 (2001): 341–59.
Mandaville, Peter. Global Political Islam. London: Routledge, 2007. Ch. 5,
“Islam as the System: Islamic States and ‘Islamization’ from Above”.
Martin, Vanessa. Creating an Islamic State: Khomeini and the Making of a
New Iran. London: I.B. Tauris, 2003.
Moaddel, Mansoor. Class, Politics and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza. Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State
Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Salomon, Noah. For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s
Islamic State. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.
Tabaar, Mohammad. Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
Zaman, Muhammad Qasim. “The Sovereignty of God in Modern Islamic
Thought.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 25, no. 3 (2015): 389–418.
Zubaida, Sami. “Is Iran an Islamic State?” In Political Islam: Essays from
Middle East Report, edited by Joel Beinin and Joe Stork. London: I.B.
Tauris, 1997.
Zubaida, Sami. Islam, the State and the People. London: I.B. Tauris,
1991. Chapter 1, “The Ideological Preconditions for Khomeini’s Doctrine of
Government.”
WEEK 4
TRANSNATIONALISM (CASE STUDY: SALAFISM)
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How have transnational connections contributed to shaping modern
Salafism? How have transnational connections facilitated cross
fertilisation between Salafism and other forms of Islamism? Is Salafism,
as found in contexts across the globe, an “export version of Wahhabism”?
Required Reading
Haykel, Bernard. “On the Nature of Salafi Thought and Action.” In Global
Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, edited by Roel Meijer, 33–57.
London: Hurst, 2009.
Lacroix, Stéphane. Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in
Contemporary Saudi Arabia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2011. Ch. 2, “The Development of the Sahwa.”
Al-Rasheed, Madawi. 2007. Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices
from a New Generation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ch. 3,
“Struggling in the Way of God Abroad: From Localism to
Transnationalism”.
Farquhar, Michael. Circuits of Faith: Migration, Education, and the
Wahhabi Mission. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016. Read pp. 1-5
(first sub-section of introduction), pp. 8-18 (sub-section titled “The
Economy of Wahhabi Expansion”), and Ch. 7 (“Leaving Medina”).
Further Reading
Adraoui, Mohamed-Ali. Salafism Goes Global: From the Gulf to the French
Banlieues. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Al-Rasheed, Madawi. 2007. Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices
from a New Generation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Al-Rasheed, Madawi. “The Local and the Global in Saudi Salafi-Jihadi
Discourse.” In Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, edited
by Roel Meijer, 301-320. London: Hurst, 2009.
Bonnefoy, Laurent. Salafism in Yemen: Transnationalism and Religious
Identity. London: Hurst, 2011.
Bonnefoy, Laurent. “How Transnational Is Salafism in Yemen?” In Global
Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, edited by Roel Meijer, 321
41. London: Hurst, 2009.
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Bowen, John R. “Beyond Migration: Islam as a Transnational Public
Space.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30, no. 5 (2004): 879
94.
Cavatorta, Francesco, and Fabio Merone, eds. Salafism After the Arab
Awakening: Contending with People’s Power. Hurst & Co, 2017.
Farquhar, Michael. Circuits of Faith: Migration, Education, and the
Wahhabi Mission. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.
Hasan, Noorhaidi. “The Salafi Movement in Indonesia: Transnational
Dynamics and Local Development.” Comparative Studies of South Asia,
Africa and the Middle East 27 (1) (2007): 83–94.
Lacroix, Stéphane. Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in
Contemporary Saudi Arabia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2011.
Mandaville, Peter G. Wahhabism and the World: Understanding Saudi
Arabia’s Global Influence on Islam, 2022.
Meijer, Roel. “Yusuf al-Uyairi and the Transnationalisation of Saudi
Jihadism.” In Kingdom Without Borders: Saudi Political, Religious and
Media Frontiers, edited by Madawi al-Rasheed, 221-243. London: Hurst
and Co, 2008.
Meijer, Roel, ed. Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement.
London: Hurst, 2009.
Pall, Zoltan. Lebanese Salafis between the Gulf and Europe:
Development, Fractionalization and Transnational Networks of Salafism in
Lebanon. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013.
Pall, Zoltan. “Can the Umma Replace the Nation? Salafism, Home-Making
and the Territorial Nation-State.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
14, no. 1 (March 1, 2024): 120–35.
Rock-Singer, Aaron. In the Shade of the Sunna: Salafi Piety in the
Twentieth-Century Middle East. University of California Press, 2022.
Vertovec, Steven. Transnationalism. London; New York: Routledge, 2009.
17
WEEK 5
ELECTORAL POLITICS
Why have Islamist movements performed well at the ballot box in some
Muslim-majority contexts? How may participation in electoral politics
contribute to shaping the discourse, behaviours and/or goals of Islamist
movements? Can Islamist movements be a force for democratization?
REQUIRED READING
El-Ghobashy, Mona. “The Metamorphosis of the Egyptian Muslim
Brothers.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37, no. 3 (2005):
373–95.
Masoud, Tarek. Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Especially ch.s, 1 and 3.
Gunning, Jeroen. Hamas in Politics: Democracy, Religion, Violence. New
York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Chapter 7, “Hamas and
Democratisation.”
FURTHER READING
Brooke, Steven. 2019. Winning Hearts and Votes: Social Services and the
Islamist Political Advantage. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Cammett, Melani, and Pauline Jones Luong. “Is There an Islamist Political
Advantage?” Annual Review of Political Science 17, no. 1 (2014): 187
206.
Cavatorta, Francesco. “Civil Society, Islamism and Democratisation: The
Case of Morocco.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 44, no. 2 (June
2006): 203–22.
Cavatorta, Francesco. “Salafism, Liberalism, and Democratic Learning in
Tunisia.” The Journal of North African Studies 20, no. 5 (October 20,
2015): 770–83.
Cavatorta, Francesco, and Fabio Merone. “Moderation through Exclusion?
The Journey of the Tunisian Ennahda from Fundamentalist to
Conservative Party.” Democratization 20, no. 5 (2013): 857–75.
18
Grewal, Sharan. “From Islamists to Muslim Democrats: The Case of
Tunisia’s Ennahda.” American Political Science Review 114, no. 2 (May
2020): 519–35.
Khanani, Ahmed. All Politics Are God’s Politics: Moroccan Islamism and
the Sacralization of Democracy. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
2021.
Kraetzschmar, Hendrik, and Paola Rivetti, eds. Islamists and the Politics
of the Arab Uprisings: Governance, Pluralisation and Contention.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. (Includes chapters on
Islamist political parties in the aftermath of the uprisings, in contexts
including Egypt, Morocco and Kuwait)
Kurzman, Charles, and Ijlal Naqvi. “Do Muslims Vote Islamic?” Journal of
Democracy 21, no. 2 (2010): 50–63.
Massad, Joseph. Islam in Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2015. Ch. 1, “The Democracy Offensive and the Defenses of
‘Islam’.”
Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza. “The Rise of ‘Muslim Democracy.’” Journal of
Democracy 16, no. 2 (2005): 13–27.
Pahwa, Sumita. “Pathways of Islamist Adaptation: The Egyptian Muslim
Brothers’ Lessons for Inclusion Moderation Theory.” Democratization 24,
no. 6 (September 19, 2017): 1066–84.
Schwedler, Jillian. Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and
Yemen. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Schwedler, Jillian. “Can Islamists Become Moderates? Rethinking the
Inclusion-Moderation Hypothesis.” World Politics 63, no. 2 (2011): 347
76.
Schwedler, Jillian. “Islamists in Power? Inclusion, Moderation, and the
Arab Uprisings.” Middle East Development Journal 5, no. 1 (January 1,
2013).
Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky. “The Path to Moderation: Strategy and
Learning in the Formation of Egypt’s Wasat Party.” Comparative Politics
36, no. 2 (2004): 205–28.
Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky. The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an
Islamist Movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. Chapters
3 (“The Brotherhood’s Foray into Electoral Politics”), 7 (“The Brotherhood
19
and the Egyptian Uprising”), and 9 (“The Brotherhood in (Egypt’s)
Transition”).
WEEK 6
READING WEEK – NO LECTURE OR SEMINARS
WEEK 7
ISLAMISM IN GEOPOLITICS (CASE STUDY: AL-QAEDA AND THE “WAR
ON TERROR”)
What led some Islamist movements like al-Qaeda to advocate a shift in
focus, from targeting domestic regimes in Muslim-majority states to
targeting Western powers? What led to the rise of Islamist “foreign
fighters” joining conflicts like the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina? What is the
relationship, if any, between “global jihad” – involving the mobilisation of
volunteers to engage in conflicts or attacks on civilian targets far from
their own countries of origin – and globalization? What is the relationship
between “global jihad” and local political dynamics?
REQUIRED READING
Wiktorowicz, Quintan. “A Genealogy of Radical Islam.” Studies in Conflict
& Terrorism 28, no. 2 (February 16, 2005): 75–97.
Roy, Olivier. Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2004. Ch. 7, “On the Path to War: Bin Laden
and Others”.
Li, Darryl. “Jihad in a World of Sovereigns: Law, Violence, and Islam in
the Bosnia Crisis.” Law & Social Inquiry 41, no. 2 (2016): 371–401.
Filiu, Jean-Pierre. “The Local and Global Jihad of Al-Qa’ida in the Islamic
Maghrib.” The Middle East Journal 63, no. 2 (April 1, 2009): 213–26.
Primary source: Bin Laden, Usama. “To the Americans.” In Messages to
the World: The Statements of Usama Bin Laden, edited by Bruce
Lawrence, 160-175. New York: Verso, 2005.
20
FURTHER READING
Al-Rasheed, Madawi. 2009. “The Local and the Global in Saudi Salafi
Jihadi Discourse.” In Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement,
edited by Roel Meijer. London: Hurst.
Barber, Benjamin R. Jihad vs. McWorld. London: Corgi, 2003.
“Introduction” and Ch. 14, “Essential Jihad: Islam and Fundamentalism”.
(If you’re engaging with this, it’s highly recommended that you also read
the article below by Timothy Mitchell, titled “McJihad: Islam in the U.S.
Global Order”).
Devji, Faisal. Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity.
London: Hurst & Company, 2005.
Devji, Faisal. The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and
Global Politics. Crises in World Politics. New York: Oxford University Press,
2020.
Gerges, Fawaz A. The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Hegghammer, Thomas. Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism
since 1979. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Including Ch.
4 (“Opportunities for Global Jihad”) and Ch. 5 (“Al-Qaida and Saudi
Arabia”).
Hegghammer, Thomas. The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of
Global Jihad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Li, Darryl. 2011. “‘Afghan Arabs,’ Real and Imagined.” MERIP. August 19,
2011. https://merip.org/2011/08/afghan-arabs-real-and-imagined/.
Li, Darryl. The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of
Solidarity. Stanford University Press, 2019.
Mamdani, Mahmood. “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: A Political Perspective
on Culture and Terrorism.” American Anthropologist 104, no. 3 (2002):
766–75.
Mandaville, Peter. Global Political Islam. London: Routledge, 2007. Ch. 7,
“Radical Islamism and Jihad Beyond the Nation-State” (up to p. 265).
Mitchell, Timothy. “McJihad: Islam in the U.S. Global Order.” Social Text
20, no. 4 (2002): 1–18.
21
Phillips, Sarah G. “Making Al-Qa’ida Legible: Counter-Terrorism and the
Reproduction of Terrorism.” European Journal of International Relations
25, no. 4 (December 1, 2019): 1132–56.
Robinson, Glenn E. Global Jihad: A Brief History. Stanford University
Press, 2020.
Thurston, Alexander. Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel: Local Politics
and Rebel Groups. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
WEEK 8
POLITICAL VIOLENCE (CASE STUDY: ISLAMIC STATE)
Why do some Islamist movements employ violence? How does the use of
violence by Islamic State compare with the ways in which other Islamist
movements have used violence (e.g. in terms of targets, rationales,
justifications, goals and methods)? How does the use of violence by
Islamist movements compare with the use of violence by non-Islamist
movements? What, if anything, is exceptional or distinctive about the
ways in which Islamist movements employ violence?
REQUIRED READING
Dallal, Ahmad S. The Political Theology of ISIS: Prophets, Messiahs, and
“the Extinction of the Grayzone.” Tadween Publishing, 2017.
Euben, Roxanne L. “Spectacles of Sovereignty in Digital Time: ISIS
Executions, Visual Rhetoric and Sovereign Power.” Perspectives on Politics
15, no. 4 (December 2017): 1007–33.
Kalyvas, Stathis N. “Jihadi Rebels in Civil War.” Daedalus 147, no. 1
(January 1, 2018): 36–47.
Primary source: Naji, Abu Bakr. The Management of Savagery: The
Most Critical Stage Through Which the Umma Will Pass. Translated by
William McCants, 2006. https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/abu
bakr-naji-the-management-of-savagery-the-most-critical-stage-through
which-the-umma-will-pass.pdf. Especially sub-section titled “Using
Violence”.
FURTHER READING
22
Asad, Talal. On Suicide Bombing. New York: Columbia University Press,
2007.
Bunzel, Cole. “From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of the Islamic
State.” Washington: Brookings, 2015.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/from-paper-state-to-caliphate-the
ideology-of-the-islamic-state/.
Cook, David. Understanding Jihad. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2015. http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520287327.
(In addition to discussion of the history of the concept of jihad, this work
also includes translations of key texts produced by militant movements
since the 1990s.)
Euben, Roxanne L. “Killing (For) Politics: Jihad, Martyrdom, and Political
Action.” Political Theory 30, no. 1 (2002): 4–35.
Friis, Simone Molin. “‘Behead, Burn, Crucify, Crush’: Theorizing the
Islamic State’s Public Displays of Violence.” European Journal of
International Relations 24, no. 2 (June 1, 2018): 243–67.
Gerges, Fawaz A. ISIS: A History. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2016.
Goldberg, Ellis. “Sacrificing Humans.” Jadaliyya, February 23, 2015.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/20934/sacrificing-humans.
Gunning, Jeroen, and Richard Jackson. “What’s so ‘Religious’ about
‘Religious Terrorism’?” Critical Studies on Terrorism 4, no. 3 (December 1,
2011): 369–88.
Hafez, Mohammed M. Why Muslims Rebel: Repression and Resistance in
the Islamic World. Boulder, Co.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003.
Hegghammer, Thomas, ed. Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of
Militant Islamists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Islamism in the IS Age. POMEPS Studies. Project on Middle East Political
Science, March 17, 2015. http://pomeps.org/wp
content/uploads/2015/03/POMEPS_Studies_12_ISAge_Web.pdf.
Kalyvas, Stathis N. “Wanton and Senseless? The Logic of Massacres in
Algeria.” Rationality and Society 11, no. 3 (August 1, 1999): 243–85.
Li, Darryl. “A Jihadism Anti-Primer.” Middle East Report 276 (Fall 2015).
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer276/jihadism-anti-primer.
23
Matesan, Ioana Emy. The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist
Groups in Egypt and Indonesia. Oxford, New York: Oxford University
Press, 2020.
Mello, Brian. “The Islamic State: Violence and Ideology in a Post-Colonial
Revolutionary Regime.” International Political Sociology 12, no. 2 (June 1,
2018): 139–55.
Revkin, Mara Redlich, and Elisabeth Jean Wood. “The Islamic State’s
Pattern of Sexual Violence: Ideology and Institutions, Policies and
Practices.” Journal of Global Security Studies, no. 38 (November 2,
2020).
Roy, Olivier. Jihad and Death: The Global Appeal of Islamic State.
London: C. Hurst & Co., 2017.
See also the two following special journal issues on ISIS, each of which
contains multiple contributions from a variety of perspectives:
• Middle East Report 276 (2015)
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/i40191471)
• Perspectives on Terrorism Vol. 9, No. 4 (2015)
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/e26297407)
WEEK 9
GENDER
How should we understand women’s support for Islamist projects which
many would see as being inimical to their own interests as women? Can
participation in Islamist projects empower women? What are the
prospects for the articulation of a truly emancipatory “Islamic feminism”?
REQUIRED READING
Moghadam, Valentine. “Islamic Feminism and Its Discontents.” Signs:
Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27, no. 4 (2002): 1135-1171.
Mahmood, Saba. “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent:
Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival.” Cultural Anthropology
16, no. 2 (2001): 202–36.
Ben Shitrit, Lihi. “Women, Freedom, and Agency in Religious Political
Movements: Reflections From Women Activists in Shas and the Islamic
24
Movement in Israel.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 9, no. 3
(November 1, 2013): 81–107.
Primary source: Mernissi, Fatima. “A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s
Rights in Islam.” In Liberal Islam: A Source Book, edited by Charles
Kurzman, 112–26. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
FURTHER READING
Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?
Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.”
American Anthropologist 104, no. 3 (2002): 783–90.
Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1992. Especially Ch. 10, “Divergent Voices” and Conclusion.
Al-Rasheed, Madawi. A Most Masculine State: Gender, Politics and
Religion in Saudi Arabia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Deeb, Lara. 2006. An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i
Lebanon. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Euben, Roxanne L. “Humiliation and the Political Mobilization of
Masculinity.” Political Theory 43 (4) (2015): 500–532.
Hafez, Sherine. An Islam of Her Own: Reconsidering Religion and
Secularism in Women’s Islamic Movements. New York: NYU Press, 2011.
Hirschkind, Charles, and Saba Mahmood. “Feminism, the Taliban, and
Politics of Counter-Insurgency.” Anthropological Quarterly 75, no. 2
(2002): 339–54.
Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist
Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Massad, Joseph A. Islam in Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2015. Chapter 2, “Women and/in ‘Islam’: The Rescue Mission of
Western Liberal Feminism”.
Moallem, Minoo. Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic
Fundamentalism and the Politics of Patriarchy in Iran. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2005.
Peletz, Michael G. 2021. “Hegemonic Muslim Masculinities and Their
Others: Perspectives from South and Southeast Asia.” Comparative
Studies in Society and History 63 (3): 534–65.
25
Rock-Singer, Aaron. Practicing Islam in Egypt: Print Media and Islamic
Revival. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Ch. 5, “Beyond
Fitna: The Emergence of Islamic Norms of Comportment”.
Roose, Joshua M. Political Islam and Masculinity: Muslim Men in Australia.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Selim, Samah. “Book Review: Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and
the Feminist Subject by Saba Mahmood.” Jadaliyya, October 13, 2010.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/235/politics-of-piety_the-islamic
revival-and-the-femi.
Tadros, Mariz. The Muslim Brotherhood in Contemporary Egypt:
Democracy Redefined or Confined? London: Routledge, 2012. Ch. 7, “The
Sisters of the Brotherhood and the Woman Question” and Ch. 8, “The
Gender Agenda: Reformed or Reframed?”
WEEK 10
SECTARIANISATION (CASE STUDY: “THE SUNNI-SHI’A DIVIDE”)
What are the historical roots of the sectarian discourses employed by
some Islamist movements and self-proclaimed Islamic states? Is
sectarianism an age-old phenomenon? In what ways are contemporary
manifestations of sectarianism novel? Why has the prominence of
sectarianism as a dimension of Islamist politics varied between contexts
and over time?
REQUIRED READING
Steinberg, Guido. “Jihadi-Salafism and the Shi’is: Remarks about the
Intellectual Roots of Anti-Shi’ism.” In Global Salafism: Islam’s New
Religious Movement, edited by Roel Meijer. London: Hurst, 2009.
Phillips, Christopher. “Sectarianism and Conflict in Syria.” Third World
Quarterly 36, no. 2 (February 1, 2015): 357–76.
Yadav, Stacey Philbrick. “Sectarianization, Islamist Republicanism, and
International Misrecognition in Yemen.” In Sectarianization: Mapping the
New Politics of the Middle East, edited by Nader Hashemi and Danny
Postel, 185–98. London: Hurst & Co., 2017.
FURTHER READING
26
Al-Rasheed, Madawi. 2011. ‘Sectarianism as Counter-Revolution: Saudi
Responses to the Arab Spring’. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism
11(3): 513–526.
Anzalone, Christopher. “In the Shadow of the Islamic State: Shi’i
Responses to Sunni Jihadist Narratives in a Turbulent Middle East”. In
Jihadism Transformed: Al-Qaeda and Islamic State’s Global Battle of
Ideas, edited by Simon Staffell & Akil N. Awan, 157-182. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016.
Bohdan, Siarhei. “‘They Were Going Together with the Ikhwan’: The
Influence of Muslim Brotherhood Thinkers on Shi‘i Islamists during the
Cold War.” The Middle East Journal 74, no. 2 (2020): 243–62.
Colgan, Jeff D. “How Sectarianism Shapes Yemen’s War.” Washington
Post, April 13, 2015, sec. Monkey Cage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey
cage/wp/2015/04/13/how-sectarianism-shapes-yemens-war/.
García, Luz Gómez. “Post-Islamism, the Failure of an Idea: Regards on
Islam and Nationalism from Khomeini’s Death to the Arab Revolts.”
Religion Compass 6, no. 10 (October 2012): 451.
Hashemi, Nader, and Danny Postel, eds. Sectarianization: Mapping the
New Politics of the Middle East, 2017.
Jalal, Pishtiwan, and Ariel I. Ahram. 2021. “Salafism, Sectarianism, and
National Identity in Iraqi Kurdistan.” The Middle East Journal 75 (3): 386
406.
Louer, Laurence. Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political
Networks in the Gulf. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
Louër, Laurence. Sunnis and Shi’a: A Political History. Translated by
Ethan Rundell. Princeton University Press, 2019.
Matthiesen, Toby. Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab
Spring That Wasn’t. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013.
Valbørn, Morten. “Bringing the ‘Other Islamists’ back in: Sunni and Shia
Islamism(s) in a sectarianized new Middle East.” In New Analyses of Shia
Politics (POMEPS Studies 28, December 2017), pp. 52-57. Available at
https://pomeps.org/wp
content/uploads/2017/12/POMEPS_Studies_28_NewAnalysis_Web.pdf
27
Valbjørn, Morten. 2020. “Beyond the beyond(s): On the (Many) Third
Way(s) beyond Primordialism and Instrumentalism in the Study of
Sectarianism.” Nations and Nationalism 26 (1): 91–107.
Valbjørn, Morten, and Jeroen Gunning. “Bringing in the ‘Other Islamists’:
Beyond Sunni-Centric Islamism Studies in a Sectarianized Middle East.”
Mediterranean Politics 26, no. 4 (August 8, 2021): 476–83.
Wagemakers, Joas. “The Enduring Legacy of the Second Saudi State:
Quietist and Radical Wahhabi Contestations of al-Wala wa-l-Bara.”
International Journal of Middle East Studies 44, no. 01 (2012): 93–110.
Wagemakers, Joas. “Sectarianism in the Service of Salafism: Shiites as a
Political Tool for Jordanian Salafis.” British Journal of Middle Eastern
Studies 49, no. 2 (March 15, 2022): 341–59.
Wehrey, Frederic. Sectarian Politics in the Gulf: From the Iraq War to the
Arab Uprisings. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.
The following two websites also include useful collections of short pieces
on sectarianism in the contemporary Middle East:
• The “Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianisation” project at
Lancaster University (https://www.sepad.org.uk/reports)
• “The Comparative Politics of Sub-State Identity in the Middle East”
series on the blog of the LSE Middle East Centre
(http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2018/09/10/the-comparative-politics
of-sub-state-identity-in-the-middle-east/)
WEEK 11
TOWARDS POST-ISLAMISM?
Is political Islam a failed project? Do we find ourselves today in an era of
“post-Islamism”? How do such claims hold up in light of the rise and fall
of Islamic State and other transformations in Islamist politics since 2011?
REQUIRED READING
Bayat, Asef. “Post-Islamism at Large.” In Post-Islamism: The Many Faces
of Political Islam, edited by Asef Bayat, 3–32. Oxford University Press,
2013.
28
Cavatorta, Francesco, and Fabio Merone. “Post-Islamism, Ideological
Evolution and ‘La Tunisianité’ of the Tunisian Islamist Party Al-Nahda.”
Journal of Political Ideologies 20, no. 1 (January 2, 2015): 27–42.
Read the short contributions by Peter Mandaville and Michaelle Browers in
“Rethinking Islamist Politics.” POMEPS Studies, 6. Project on Middle East
Political Science, February 11, 2014. Available at https://pomeps.org/wp
content/uploads/2014/06/POMEPS_Studies6_IslamistPolitics.pdf.
FURTHER READING
Bayat, Asef. Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post
Islamist Turn. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.
Bayat, Asef, ed. Post-Islamism: The Many Faces of Political Islam. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013.
Burgat, François. Face to Face with Political Islam. London: I.B. Tauris,
2003. Read pp. 180-185, “The Hidden Assumptions of ‘Post-Islamism’”
and “Beyond Islamism”.
Holdo, Markus. “Post-Islamism and Fields of Contention after the Arab
Spring: Feminism, Salafism and the Revolutionary Youth.” Third World
Quarterly 38, no. 8 (August 3, 2017): 1800–1815.
Ismail, Salwa. “The Paradox of Islamist Politics.” Middle East Report 221
(2001): 34–39.
Lauzière, Henri. “Post-Islamism and the Religious Discourse of ʿAbd Al
Salam Yasin.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37, no. 2 (May
1, 2005): 241–61.
Mandaville, Peter. Islam and Politics. London: Routledge, 2014. Ch. 8,
“Towards Post-Islamism? Globalization and Muslim Politics”.
“Rethinking Islamist Politics.” POMEPS Studies, 6. Project on Middle East
Political Science, February 11, 2014. https://pomeps.org/wp
content/uploads/2014/06/POMEPS_Studies6_IslamistPolitics.pdf.
Roy, Olivier. The Failure of Political Islam. London: I.B. Tauris, 1994.
Especially Introduction, Chapters 2 (“The Concepts of Islamism”), 4 (“The
Impasses of Islamist Ideology”) and 5 (“Neofundamentalism: From the
Muslim Brotherhood to the Algerian FIS”).
Roy, Olivier. Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2004. Ch. 2, “Post-Islamism”.
29
Volpi, Frédéric. “Postface: Islamism Is Dead, Long Live Islamism.” In
Whatever Happened to the Islamists? Salafis, Heavy Metal Muslims and
the Lure of Consumerist Islam, edited by Olivier Roy and Amel
Boubekeur, 247–53. London: Hurst and Company, 2012.
30