This book focuses on the involvement of some Kenyans in al-Shabaab, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda based in Somalia, despite their country’s relative stability compared to Somalia. It discusses the origin of the Kenyan state and how colonization created social stratification that benefited elites closer to the center, while excluding marginalized groups at the periphery. The argument is that this pattern still prevails, despite attempts to enhance equality, such as the adoption of a new constitution in 2010 promoting the devolution of power and resources. The persistence of this condition, it is argued, is what initially handed al-Qaeda and later al-Shabaab opportunities for mobilization, enabled by its creative politicization of religion. The heavy-handed tactics employed by security forces under the auspices of the ‘War on Terror’ further catalyzed this process, resulting in more Kenyan individuals joining the group. Using an historical and political process approach, the book shows how the interplay of structural conditions and al-Shabaab’s mobilization strategy linked with individuals’ motivations for joining the group. Based on individuals’ own narratives about their participation, the latter is empirically demonstrated to be non-linear, incorporating motivations beyond rational ones, contrary to the overemphasis on ideology in the literature on participation in groups similar to al-Shabaab. This book will of much interest to students of political violence, African politics, Islamic studies and International Relations.

Mobilizing Islam explores how and why Islamic groups succeeded in galvanizing educated youth into politics under the shadow of Egypt's authoritarian state, offering important and surprising answers to a series of pressing questions. Under what conditions does mobilization by opposition groups become possible in authoritarian settings? Why did Islamist groups have more success attracting recruits and overcoming governmental restraints than their secular rivals? And finally, how can Islamist mobilization contribute to broader and more enduring forms of political change throughout the Muslim world? Moving beyond the simplistic accounts of "Islamic fundamentalism" offered by much of the Western media, Mobilizing Islam offers a balanced and persuasive explanation of the Islamic movement's dramatic growth in the world's largest Arab state.

The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey explains why political Islam, which has been part of Turkish politics since the 1970s but on the rise only since the 1990s, has now achieved governing power. Drawing on social movement theory, the book focuses on the dominant form of Islamist activism in Turkey by analyzing the increasing electoral strength of four successive Islamist political parties: the Welfare Party; its successor, the Virtue Party; and the successors of the Virtue Party: the Felicity Party and the Justice and Development Party. This book, which is based on extensive primary and secondary sources as well as in-depth interviews, provides the most comprehensive analysis currently available of the Islamist political mobilization in Turkey.

Presents the first ethnographic study of al-Muhajiroun, an outlawed activist network that survived British counter-terrorism efforts and sent fighters to the Islamic State.

In Peaceful Islamist Mobilization in the Muslim World: What Went Right , Julie Chernov Hwang presents a compelling and innovative new theory and framework for examining the variation in Islamist mobilization strategies in Muslim Asia and the Middle East.

This book explores why Islam becomes politicized in some countries and not in others, comparing diverse cases including Turkey, Algeria, and Senegal.

Rethinking Political Islam offers a fine-grained and definitive overview of the changing world of political Islam in the post-Arab Uprising era.