This book examines the social and political activities of the English Dissenters in the age of the American Revolution. By comparing sermons, political pamphlets, and election ephemera to poll books, city directories, and baptismal registers, this book offers an integrated approach to the study of ideology and behavior.

Early industrial England witnessed significant interactions between millenarianism and traditions of radical popular politics, including the first English socialisms. This book provides a detailed archive-based study of Southcottianism from 1815 to 1840 that revises many previous assumptions about this popular millenarian movement.

The mid-seventeenth century saw both the expansion of the Baptist sect and the rise and growth of Quakerism. At first, the Quaker movement attracted some Baptist converts, but relations between the two groups soon grew hostile. Public disputes broke out and each group denounced the other in polemical tracts. Nevertheless in this book, Underwood contends that Quakers and Baptists had much in common with each other, as well as with the broader Puritan and Nonconformist tradition. By examining the Quaker/Baptist relationship in particular, Underwood seeks to understand where and why Quaker views diverged from English Protestantism in general and, in the process, to clarify early Quaker beliefs.

Youth, Education, and Islamic Radicalism offers groundbreaking analysis of religious intolerance and radicalization among high school and university students in modern-day Indonesia. Indonesia is one of the most diverse countries in the world in terms of religion, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, but also in the complexity of its education system. Youth, Education, and Islamic Radicalism examines the roots of religious intolerance among young Indonesians and explores the various ways in which educated youth navigate radical ideologies amid growing religious conservatism. The book presents nuanced explanations as to why one person becomes radicalized while another does not, calling into question the common assumption that religious radicalism is directly connected to terrorism. It problematizes the notion that the university is a significant hub, trigger, or birthplace of radicalization by asking: What makes education attractive for extremist recruitment? What shapes students’ views? Under what circumstances do radicalization and deradicalization processes of educated youth take place? Youth, Education, and Islamic Radicalism identifies a constellation of factors that shape young people’s views of religious diversity in Indonesia, demonstrating the ways in which they become radicalized in the first place, and how, in some cases, they deradicalize themselves.

This book explores the ways in which five female radical novelists of the 1790s—Elizabeth Inchbald, Eliza Fenwick, Mary Hays, Charlotte Smith, and Mary Wollstonecraft—attempt to use the components of private life to work toward widespread social reform. These writers depict the conjugal family as the site for a potential reformation of the prejudices and flaws of the biological family. The biological family in the radical novels of female writers is fraught with problems: greed and selfishness pervert the relationships between siblings, and neglect and ignorance characterize the parenting received by the heroines. Additionally, the radical novelists, responding to representations of biological families as inherently restrictive for unmarried women, develop the notion of marriage to a certain type of man as a social duty. Marriage between two properly sensible people who have both cultivated their reason and understanding and who can live together as equals, sharing domestic responsibilities, is shown to be an ideal with the power to create social change. Positioning their depictions of marriage in opposition to earlier feminist depictions of female utopian societies, the female radical novelists of the 1790s strive to depict relationships between men and women that are characterized by cooperation, individual autonomy, and equality. What is most important about these depictions is their ultimate failure. Most of the female radical novelists find such marriages nearly impossible to conceptualize. Marriage, for many of the female radical novelists, was an institution they perceived as inextricably related to (male) concerns about property and inescapably patriarchal under the marriage laws of late eighteenth-century British society. Unions between two worthy individuals outside the boundaries of marriage are shown in the female radical novels to be equally problematic: sex inevitably is the basis for such unions, yet sex leaves women vulnerable to exploitation by men. Rather than the triumph, therefore, of what comes to be in these novels the male-associated values of property and power through marriage, the female radical novels end by suggesting an alternative community, one that will shelter those members of society who are most frequently exploited in male attempts to accumulate this property and power: women, servants, and children.

Through analysis of the life and writings of eighteenth-century Quaker artist and author Mary Knowles, Judith Jennings uncovers concrete but complex examples of how gender functioned in family, social, and public contexts during the Georgian Age. Knowles's story, including her bold confrontation of Samuel Johnson and public dispute with James Boswell, serves as a lens through which to view larger connections, such as the social transformation of English Quakers, changing concepts of gender and the transmission of radical political ideology during the era of the American and French revolutions. Further, Jennings offers a more nuanced view of the participation of "middling" women in radical politics through an examination of Knowles's theological beliefs, social networks and political opinions at a time when the American and French Revolutions reshaped political ideology. By analyzing Mary Knowles's connections-both male and female-Jennings contributes new understanding about how sociability operated, encompassing women and men of various faiths and ethnic origins.

This book sheds light on religiously motivated extremism and violence in South Asia, a phenomenon which ostensibly poses critical and unique challenges to the peace, security and governance not only of the region, but also of the world at large. The book is distinctive in-so-far as it reexamines conventional wisdom held about religious extremism in South Asia and departs from the literature which centres its analyses on Islamic militancy based on the questions and assumptions of the West’s ‘war on terror’. This volume also offers a comprehensive analysis of new extremist movements and how their emergence and success places existing theoretical frameworks in the study of religious extremism into question. It further examines topical issues including the study of social media and its impact on the evolution and operation of violent extremism. The book also analyses grassroots and innovative non-state initiatives aimed to counter extremist ideologies. Through case studies focusing on Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, this collection examines extremist materials, methods of political mobilisation and recruitment processes and maps the interconnected nature of sociological change with the ideological transformations of extremist movements.

This book explores in a comparative perspective two fundamentalist waves that have rolled over the Middle East during the last two decades. Jewish and Muslim extremism have had a profound impact on the culture and politics of this important region. One thinks immediately of the Guh Emunism settlements on the West Bank, the Iranian revolution, and the assassination of President Sadat. The authors highlight various facets of the phenomena, such as Haradi Jewish ultra-orthodoxy, the transformation of secular Israeli nationalism by the Gush, Iranian attempts to spread the revolutionary gospel to the Sunni world, and fundamentalism as the spearhead of the national uprising in the Gaza. The introduction outlines what the extremist movements in both religions have in common, where they diverge, and how they are shaping the future of the Middle East.

This book analyses the factors and processes behind radicalisation of both native and self-identified Muslim youths. It argues that European youth responds differently to the challenges posed by contemporary flows of globalisation such as deindustrialisation, socio-economic, political, spatial, and psychological forms of deprivation, humiliation, and structural exclusion. The book revisits social, economic, political, and psychological drivers of radicalisation and challenges contemporary uses of the term “radicalism”. It argues that neoliberal forms of governance are often responsible for associating radicalism with extremism, terrorism, fundamentalism, and violence. It will appeal to students and scholars of migration, minority studies, nationalisms, European studies, sociology, political science, and psychology. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

This collection offers a political analysis of religious radicalism in the Greater Middle East - comprising the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. The contributors present various conceptual perspectives including international relations, Middle East studies and political sociology.