Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Near East, Near Orient, grade: very good, University of Vienna (Institute for Politcal Science), course: African Political Systems, language: English, abstract: In the vast field of political culture on the one hand and public participation, respectively democratisation, on the other hand I will start by limiting the field of my study by defining its aims. My first guiding thesis is that there is a cleavage between state and society in Egypt and I want to show some aspects and dimensions of its present status and its historical origins. The two central fields of my study will be firstly the actual secular state practice and its ideological origins and secondly Islam, its influence in Egyptian society, and its compatibility to liberal trends, the concept of civil society or democracy in general. To look at public participation in any state is an ambitious task, for the field of participation is broad and hard to measure. I will deal with political public participation. Public participation can be limited to social groups, like syndicates. By aims I am referring to the fact that different groups have different participatory intentions. This aspect becomes more interesting when looking at Islamist groups. Looking at public participation is at the same time looking at democratic processes and political culture of the society being analysed. This includes regarding in what way the preconditions for political participation are provided: Freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of press and last but not least education. Political culture includes as well many cultural aspects of the society analysed, here Islam comes in as a religion as well as a theoretical system for a society respectively a state. All those being components of political culture, the basic research questions are consequently: What is public participation, or rather what will be the definiti

For 130 years, tensions have raged over the place of Islamic ideas and practices within modern Egypt. This history focuses on a pivotal yet understudied school, Dar al-Ulum, whose alumni became authoritative arbiters of how to be modern and authentic within a Muslim-majority community, including by founding the Muslim Brotherhood.

What, exactly, is secularism? What has the West's long familiarity with it inevitably obscured? In this work, Hussein Ali Agrama tackles these questions. Focusing on the fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, he delves deeply into the meaning of secularism itself and the ambiguities that lie at its heart.

An accessible and wide-ranging survey of modern Arab culture covering political, intellectual and social aspects.

For years, scholars hypothesized about what Islamists might do if they ever came to power. Now, they have answers: confusing ones. In the Levant, ISIS established a government by brute force, implementing an extreme interpretation of Islamic law. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Tunisia's Ennahda Party governed in coalition with two secular parties, ratified a liberal constitution, and voluntarily stepped down from power. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, the world's oldest Islamist movement, won power through free elections only to be ousted by a military coup. The strikingly disparate results of Islamist movements have challenged conventional wisdom on political Islam, forcing experts and Islamists to rethink some of their most basic assumptions. In Rethinking Political Islam, two of the leading scholars on Islamism, Shadi Hamid and William McCants, have gathered a group of leading specialists in the field to explain how an array of Islamist movements across the Middle East and Asia have responded. Unlike ISIS and other jihadist groups that garner the most media attention, these movements have largely opted for gradual change. Their choices, however, have been reshaped by the revolutionary politics of the region. The groups depicted in the volume capture the contradictions, successes, and failures of Islamism, providing a fascinating window into a rapidly changing Middle East. It is the first book to systematically assess the evolution of mainstream Islamist groups since the Arab uprisings and the rise of ISIS, covering 12 country cases. In each instance, contributors address key questions, including: gradual versus revolutionary approaches to change; the use of tactical or situational violence; attitudes toward the nation-state; and how ideology, religion, and political variables interact. For the first time in book form, readers will also hear directly from Islamist activists and leaders themselves, as they offer their own perspectives on the future of their movements. Islamists will have the opportunity to challenge the assumptions and arguments of some of the leading scholars of Islamism, in the spirit of constructive dialogue. Rethinking Political Islam includes three of the most important country cases outside the Middle East-Indonesia, Malaysia, and Pakistan-allowing readers to consider a greater diversity of Islamist experiences. The book's contributors have immersed themselves in the world of political Islam and conducted original research in the field, resulting in rich accounts of what animates Islamist behavior.

Since the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996, the public has grappled with the relationship between Islamic education and radical Islam. Media reports tend to paint madrasas--religious schools dedicated to Islamic learning--as medieval institutions opposed to all that is Western and as breeding grounds for terrorists. Others have claimed that without reforms, Islam and the West are doomed to a clash of civilizations. Robert Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman bring together eleven internationally renowned scholars to examine the varieties of modern Muslim education and their implications for national and global politics. The contributors provide new insights into Muslim culture and politics in countries as different as Morocco, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. They demonstrate that Islamic education is neither timelessly traditional nor medieval, but rather complex, evolving, and diverse in its institutions and practices. They reveal that a struggle for hearts and minds in Muslim lands started long before the Western media discovered madrasas, and that Islamic schools remain on its front line. Schooling Islam is the most comprehensive work available in any language on madrasas and Islamic education.

Islamist thinkers used to debate the doctrine of the caliphate of man, which holds that God is sovereign but has appointed the multitude of believers as His vicegerent. Andrew March argues that the doctrine underpins a democratic vision of popular rule over governments and clerics. But is this an ideal regime destined to survive only in theory?