The Awakening of Muslim Democracy

Reviews / Votes

'An indispensable guide to the understanding of political Islam by one of Europe's leading analysts. Theoretically sophisticated, this book answers all the big questions.' Roger Owen, Emeritus Professor, Harvard University, Massachusetts 'Jocelyne Cesari not only combines historically rich analysis with admirable geographical breadth and coverage of recent events, she also forces us to view familiar questions through some very new lenses. Rather than approaching political Islam through the prism of social movements and opposition, her starting point is the state and formal institutions. But that is not always her ending point: she shows how and why democracy - if it emerges - is often likely to take some unfamiliar forms in political systems in which political Islam is deeply entrenched.' Nathan Brown, George Washington University 'One of the dominant scholarly assumptions regarding political Islam is the dichotomy between state and religion and between modernization and Islamization. The Awakening of Muslim Democracy turns this dominant hypothesis on its head. It argues that state actions and politics have played a key role in politicizing Islam and that the modernization of Muslim societies did not lead to privatization of religion but rather to the politicization of Islam. By bringing the state back and integrating an institutional approach with the social and individual levels, this book makes a critical contribution to our understanding of religion, modernity, and the state in the Muslim world.' Fawaz A. Gerges, London School of Economics and Political Science, and author of The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (Cambridge University Press, 2014)