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"What exactly is Islamism? And what explains its violent expansion in recent decades? Why are Islamists so determined to change the world order? Are there similarities between Islamism and classical totalitarian regimes and ideologies? Will it fail, as those regimes did in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—or can it adapt effectively to changing realities? What are the fundamental strengths and weaknesses of the Islamic project? Addressing these questions within a context both historical and global, Mehdi Mozaffari provides an important new framework for understanding the full impact of Islamism in the Middle East and beyond."--Publisher's description.
This book is a theoretical inquiry on the relation of the body politic with the religious movements in the time between the Constitutional Revolution and the Islamic Revolution in Iran; it illustrates speculative and historical analyses on the relationship of state, religion, and socio-political status in the late Qajar dynasty (1905-1925) and the whole Pahlavi monarchy. Particularly, it examines the applicability of “liberal conservatism” to the era of the last Shah of Iran. The thesis defines the term political conservatism in accord with Edmund Burke’s philosophy. It deals next with the definition of religious reformation, the peculiar characteristics of Islam, the Shi'ite political...
Terrorist's Creed casts a penetrating beam of empathetic understanding into the disturbing and murky psychological world of fanatical violence, explaining how the fanaticism it demands stems from the profoundly human need to imbue existence with meaning and transcendence.
Rethinking Utopia is a collection that discusses utopian thinking in relation to different philosophical themes. It seeks utopianism in political theory (particularly in Kant and Derrida), populism, Turkish Islamism, international law, and it fleshes out themes of modernism and classless society in the selected utopian examples. By discussing and showing the relationship between utopia and these topics, the book shows that the range of subjects related to utopias is wider than the current literature suggests. The book attempts to bring together academic fields, which are not cross-fertilized in the existing debates on utopia, by building bridges between actual politics and futuristic visions. On the one hand, it looks at utopia as a means to think about and reconfigure contemporary politics (as in the case of international law and populist politics); on the other hand, it investigates how different philosophical/literary texts, from widely-known More and Le Guin to lesser-known Turkish Islamists Kısakürek, Karakoç and Özel, imagine their distinct utopian vision where a new form of anarchist, classless or Islamist society could be possible.
The term civilization comes with considerable baggage, dichotomizing people, cultures, and histories as civilized - or not. While the idea of civilization has been deployed throughout history to justify all manner of interventions and sociopolitical engineering, few scholars have stopped to consider what the concept actually means. Here, ..
Demystifying the Sacred: Blasphemy and Violence from the French Revolution to Today offers a much-needed analysis of a subject that historians have largely ignored, yet that has considerable relevance for today’s world: the powerful connection that exists between offences against the sacred and different forms of violence. Drawing on cases from revolutionary France to the Russia of Vladimir Putin, the international authors probe the nature and agency of local blasphemy accusations, the historical and legal framework in which they were expressed and the violence, both physical and symbolic, accompanying them. In doing so, the volume reveals how cultures of blasphemy, and related acts of heresy, apostasy and sacrilege, were a companion to or acted as a trigger for physical action but also a form of how violence was experienced. More generally, it shows the importance of religious sensibilities in modern society and the violent potential contained in criticism or ridicule of the sacred and secular alike.
Globalization and Civilizations challenges established assumptions about the nature of civilizations and the supposed inevitability of the conflict between the Islamic and Western worlds. Uniquely, this edited book critically interrogates the concept of 'civilization' by asking whether it is still valid in the globalized world economy of the twenty-first century. The first half of the book provides an historical and theoretical context to understand the idea of 'civilization' in political science and demonstrates how the various social, economic, political and cultural processes of globalization have radically altered perceptions of civilization. The second half of the book looks particularly at non-Western examples of the interaction between globalization and civilization and includes case studies on the Arab world, Islam, China, India and Europe
Globalization on Trial challenges the conventional view that equates globalization with the expansion of the capitalist economic system. With a broad historical and holistic brush, the author presents a view of globalization that is both multidisciplinary and multicultural. What opportunities must we seize? What dangers must we overcome? Rajaee examines human governance and the paradox of globalism and nationalism (or "nativism"), providing a particularly fresh perspective on Islamic civilization. He also focuses on our education system and how it will have to adapt to meet the new challenges.
For over a quarter century, Iran has been one of America's chief nemeses. Ever since Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah in 1979, the relationship between the two nations has been antagonistic: revolutionary guards chanting against the Great Satan, Bush fulminating against the Axis of Evil, Iranian support for Hezbollah, and President Ahmadinejad blaming the U.S. for the world's ills. The unending war of words suggests an intractable divide between Iran and the West, one that may very well lead to a shooting war in the near future. But as Ray Takeyh shows in this accessible and authoritative history of Iran's relations with the world since the revolution, behind the famous personalities an...