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This book is the first to provide a complete overview of Islamic extremism in Kuwait. It traces the development of Islamist fundamentalist groups in Kuwait, both Shiite and Sunni, from the beginning of the twentieth century. It outlines the nature and origins of the many different groups, considers their ideology and organization, shows how their activities are intertwined with the wider economy, society and politics to the extent that they are now a strong part of society, and discusses their armed activities, including terrorist activities. Although focusing on Kuwait, it includes overage of the activities of Islamist groups in other Gulf States. It also discusses the relation between Ruling Families with Islamist political groups, thereby demonstrating that the intertwining of Islamic ideology and armed activities with politics is not a new development in the region.
The book examines this phenomenon from multiple research angles: intellectual, political, ideological, cultural and social, exploring political religious thought in its various manifestations, and explaining the intellectual and organizational disparities between relevant groups. The book tracks the history of this phenomenon, tracing it to its peak in the early 2010s, revealing the intellectual and ideological characteristics of these groups for interested researchers, decision makers and the public in an effort to deconstruct the various obstacles they pose to civilizational progress and development in Arab and Muslim countries. Every chapter reflects the author’s conviction that politic...
Salafism in Jordan debunks stereotypes and presents the diversity of Salafism on a range of political and ideological issues.
This book focuses on the relationship established between China, the world’s second largest economy, and Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter. Due to Saudi Arabia’s dominance of the world oil market, China is increasingly focusing its attention on the Saudi Arabia as a reliable oil supplier while Saudi Arabia sees China as an enormous potential market and strategic trade partner. It investigates both countries’ motives for establishing a strategic relationship and outlines the potential for successful co-operation between them. It then goes on to address the wider implications for the United States in the Middle East.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, also known as the 'Sepah', has wielded considerable and increasing power in Iran in recent decades. Established in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini as a paramilitary organisation charged with protecting the nascent Islamic regime and countering the untrustworthy Imperial army (or 'Artesh'), the Sepah has evolved into one of the most powerful political, ideological, military and economic players in Iran over recent years. The Sepah is entrusted with a diverse set of indoctrination apparatus, training programmes and system welfare provisions intended to broaden support for the regime. Although established as a paramilitary organisation, the Sepah developed to have i...
As the economies of East Asia grow ever stronger, their need for energy resources increases, which in turn compels closer relations with the countries of the Middle East. This book examines the developing relations between the countries of East Asia, especially China and Japan, with the countries of the Middle East. It looks at various key bilateral relationships, including with Iran and Syria, discusses the impact on the United States’ hegemony in both regions, considers whether the new relations represent a contribution to, or a threat to, peace and stability, and assesses the implications of the changes for patterns of regional and global international relations systems.
This book focuses on Islamic family law as interpreted and applied by judges in Europe, Australia and North America. It uses court transcriptions and observations to discuss how the most contentious marriage-related issues - consent and age of spouses, dower, polygamy, and divorce - are adjudicated. The solutions proposed by different legal systems are reviewed , and some broader questions are addressed: how Islamic principles are harmonized with norms based on gender equality, how parties bargain strategically in and out of court, and how Muslim diasporas align their Islamic worldview with a Western normative narrative.
In recent years bitter controversies have erupted across Europe and the Middle East about women’s veiling, and especially their wearing of the face-veil or niqab. Yet the deeper issues contained within these controversies – secularism versus religious belief, individual freedom versus social or family coercion, identity versus integration – are not new but are strikingly prefigured by earlier conflicts. This book examines the state-sponsored anti-veiling campaigns which swept across wide swathes of the Muslim world in the interwar period, especially in Turkey and the Balkans, Iran, Afghanistan and the Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It shows how veiling was officially discouraged and ridiculed as backward and, although it was rarely banned, veiling was politicized and turned into a rallying-point for a wider opposition. Asking a number of questions about this earlier anti-veiling discourse and the policies flowing from it, and the reactions which it provoked, the book illuminates and contextualizes contemporary debates about gender, Islam and modernism.
Whereas most studies of Islamism focus on politics and religious ideology, this book analyses the ways in which Islamism in the Arab world is defined, reflected, transmitted and contested in a variety of creative and other cultural forms. It covers a range of contexts of production and reception, from the early twentieth century to the present, and with reference to cultural production in and/or about Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, the Gulf, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine. The material engaged with is produced in Arabic, English and French and includes fiction, autobiography, feature films, television series, television reportage, the press, rap music and video games. Throughout, the book highlights the multiple forms and contested interpretations of Islamism in the Arab world, exploring trends and tensions in the ways Islamism is represented to (primarily) Arab audiences and complicating simplistic perspectives on this phenomenon. The book considers repeated and idiosyncratic themes, modes of characterisation, motifs, structures of feeling and forms of engagement, in the context of an ongoing struggle for symbolic power in the region.
This book explores the activities of the local Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. It examines how the Brotherhood, working to establish an alternative social, political and moral order through a network of Islamic institutions, made a huge contribution to the transformation of Jordanian society. It reveals, however, that the Brotherhood’s involvement in the economic realm, in Islamic financial activities, led it to engage with the neo-liberal approach to the economy, with the result that the Islamic social institutions created by the Brotherhood, such as charities, lost their importance in favour of profit-oriented activities owned by leading Islamist individuals. The book thereby demonstrates the "hybridisation" of Islamism, and argues that Islamism is not an abstract set of beliefs, but rather a collection of historically constructed practices. The book also illustrates how globalisation is profoundly influencing culture and society in the Arab world, though modified by the adoption of an Islamic framework.