Rejecting theories of economic deprivation and psychological alienation, Mohammed Hafez offers a provocative analysis of the factors that contribute to protracted violence in the Muslim world today. Hafez combines a sophisticated theoretical approach and detailed case studies to show that the primary source of Islamist insurgencies lies in the repressive political environments within which the vast majority of Muslims find themselves. Highlighting when and how institutional exclusion and indiscriminate repression contribute to large-scale rebellion, he provides a crucial dimension to our understanding of Islamic politics.

In this first ground-level account of the Muslim separatist rebellion in the Philippines, Thomas McKenna challenges prevailing anthropological analyses of nationalism as well as their underlying assumptions about the interplay of culture and power. He examines Muslim separatism against a background of more than four hundred years of political relations among indigenous Muslim rulers, their subjects, and external powers seeking the subjugation of Philippine Muslims. He also explores the motivations of the ordinary men and women who fight in armed separatist struggles and investigates the formation of nationalist identities. A skillful meld of historical detail and ethnographic research, Muslim Rulers and Rebels makes a compelling contribution to the study of protest, rebellion, and revolution worldwide.

In this pioneering study, Hisham Aidi—an expert on globalization and social movements—takes us into the musical subcultures that have emerged among Muslim youth worldwide over the last decade. He shows how music—primarily hip-hop, but also rock, reggae, Gnawa and Andalusian—has come to express a shared Muslim consciousness in face of War on Terror policies. This remarkable phenomenon extends from the banlieues of Paris to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, from the park jams of the South Bronx to the Sufi rock bands of Pakistan. The United States and other Western governments have even tapped into these trends, using hip hop and Sufi music to de-radicalize Muslim youth abroad. Aidi situates these developments in a broader historical context, tracing longstanding connections between Islam and African-American music. Thoroughly researched, beautifully written, Rebel Music takes the pulse of a revolutionary soundtrack that spans the globe.

The Kharijites were the first sectarian movement in Islamic history, a rebellious splinter group that separated itself from mainstream Muslim society and set about creating, through violence, an ideal community of the saved. Their influence in the political and theological life of the nascent faith has ensured their place in both critical and religious accounts of early Islamic history. Based on the image of sect fostered by the Islamic tradition, the name Kharijite defines a Muslim as an overly-pious zealot whose ideas and actions lie beyond the pale of normative Islam. After a brief look at Kharijite origins and the traditional image of these early rebels, this book focuses on references to the Kharijites in Egypt from the 1950s to the 1990s. Jeffrey T. Kenney shows how the traditional image of the Kharijites was reawakened to address the problem of radical Islamist opposition movements. The Kharijites came to play a central role in the rhetoric of both religious authorities, whose official role it is to interpret Islam for the masses, and the secular state, which cynically turns to Islamic ideas and symbols to defend its legitimacy. Even those Islamists who defend militant tactics, and who are themselves tainted by the Kharijite label, become participants in the discourse surrounding Kharijism. Although all Egyptians agree that modern Kharijites represent a dangerous threat to society, serious debates have arisen about the underlying social, political and economic problems that lead Muslims down this destructive path. Kenney examines these debates and what they reveal about Egyptian attitudes toward Islamist violence and its impact on their nation. Long before 9/11, Egyptians have been dealing with the problem of Islamist violence, frequently evoking the Kharijites. This book represents an important contribution to Islamic studies and Middle East studies, adding to our understanding of how the Islamic past shapes the present discourse surrounding Islamist violence in one Muslim society.

While jihad has been the subject of countless studies in the wake of recent terrorist attacks, scholarship on the topic has so far paid little attention to South Asian Islam and, more specifically, its place in South Asian history. Seeking to fill some gaps in the historiography, Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst examines the effects of the 1857 Rebellion (long taught in Britain as the 'Indian Mutiny') on debates about the issue of jihad during the British Raj. Morgenstein Fuerst shows that the Rebellion had lasting, pronounced effects on the understanding by their Indian subjects (whether Muslim, Hindu or Sikh) of imperial rule by distant outsiders. For India's Muslims their interpretation of the Rebellion as jihad shaped subsequent discourses, definitions and codifications of Islam in the region. Morgenstein Fuerst concludes by demonstrating how these perceptions of jihad, contextualised within the framework of the 19th century Rebellion, continue to influence contemporary rhetoric about Islam and Muslims in the Indian subcontinent.Drawing on extensive primary source analysis, this unique take on Islamic identities in South Asia will be invaluable to scholars working on British colonial history, India and the Raj, as well as to those studying Islam in the region and beyond.

Khaled Abou El Fadl's book represents the first systematic examination of the idea and treatment of political resistance and rebellion in Islamic law. Pre-modern jurists produced an extensive and sophisticated discourse on the legality of rebellion and the treatment due to rebels under Islamic law. The book examines the emergence and development of these discourses from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries and considers juristic responses to the various terror-inducing strategies employed by rebels including assassination, stealth attacks and rape. The study demonstrates how Muslim jurists went about restructuring several competing doctrinal sources in order to construct a highly technical discourse on rebellion. Indeed many of these rulings may have a profound influence on contemporary practices. This is an important and challenging book which sheds light on the complexities of Islamic law and pre-modern attitudes to dissidence and rebellion.