This challenging new perspective on Tunisia's al-Nahda movement focuses on the lived experience of Islamist activism.

This comprehensive handbook examines relationships between religion, politics and ideology, with a focus on several world religions — Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism — in a variety of contexts, regions and countries. Relationships between religion, politics and ideology help mould people’s attitudes about the way that political systems, both domestically and internationally, are organised and operate. While conceptually separate, religion, politics and ideology often become intertwined and as a result their relationships evolve over time. This volume brings together a number of expert contributors who explore a wide range of topical and controversial issues, including gender, nationalism, communism, fascism, populism and Islamism. Such topics inform the overall aim of the handbook: to provide a comprehensive summary of the relationships between religion, politics and ideology, including basic issues and new approaches. This handbook is a major research resource for students, researchers and professionals from various disciplinary backgrounds, including religious studies, political science, international relations, and sociology.

Through critical analysis of Turkey's transformation under the AKP, this book explores the relationship between domestic transformations and global/regional dynamics. It also discusses the relationship between the Turkish transformation and the Arab uprisings and the implications of the Turkish case for regime transitions in the Arab world.

This book offers a ten-year perspective on ongoing and evolving practices of digital activism across the Middle East and North Africa, drawing on interviews and ethnographic evidence collected between 2012 and 2022. It examines the shifting narrative around digital activism in the region, from the wake of the 2011 uprisings to the 2019 series of protests coined 'the second wave of the Arab Spring'. It considers how media activists navigate the transition from the emergent to the mainstream in a climate of contentious politics, following the civil mobilisations of the pro-revolutionary youths in Tunisia, Egypt, and Lebanon. It outlines the particularities of these three different political contexts and media environments, featuring case studies of the Tunisian blogosphere, online campaigning in the Egyptian elections and interviews with social media activists. In light of this empirical evidence, the book offers a critique of the increasing prevalence of a security perspective through which online activism has been viewed and its deleterious effect on digital political engagement in the region.

In fact, Ghannouchi contends that civil society is an Islamic concept whereas secularism, especially in the model imported to the Muslim world under the guise of modernization, weakens it."--Jacket.

Religion plays a crucial role in the culture and history of nations. Christianity and Islam command the most followers with two billion and 1.3 billion, respectively. Both started in the Middle East. But each spread through a different path. Some interpret 'jihad' as moral strife against the self while others think of it as an obligation to defend the faith against its enemies. So the question is 'jihad' moral or violent? The book discusses how Islam views Christianity? Did technology alter the way clerics in Muslim-majority countries monopoly teaching the Islamic faith? How did the Internet, satellite television, and smart phones influence social life and extend to the spiritual realm? The second half of the twentieth century had seen some eventful developments in the Middle East. Political changes proved far reaching, sometimes with detrimental outcomes. How did recent events affect Egypt--the most pivotal country in the Arab world? Did fanaticism survive in Egypt?

This book provides a pioneering and original study of the regional effects of political Islam. It sets out the multifaceted interactions between Islam and politics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, focussing in particular on the so-called Islamic State (IS) organization in its broad discussion of political Islam. Utilizing a trans-disciplinary perspective, the book interacts with social constructivism and complex realism theories to analyse the clash between the modern notion of the state and that of identity in the region. Looking at issues such as the rise of IS and its attempts to establish a caliphate, the book offers three different, yet complementary, levels of analysis for its discussion. These being: Regional (dis)order, the erosion of state power and its boundaries, and the role of non-state actors in shaping the politics of the MENA region. Each of these levels are addressed in detail in turn in order to build a comprehensive picture of state and political Islam in the Arab core of the MENA region. What emerges is a comprehensive analysis of the interlinked relationships between political and Islamic elements of Arab polities and societies. As such, this book will be of great interest to academics and policymakers focusing on matters relating to the study of Islam, Islam and politics, study of religion more broadly, and security studies and area studies, particularly in the MENA region.

Sensory Penalties aims to reinvigorate a conversation about the role of sensory experience in empirical investigation. It explores the visceral, personal reflections buried within forgotten criminological field notes, to ask what privileging these sensorial experiences does for how we understand and research spaces of punishment and social control.

"Written by a group of well-known experts and researchers who have diligently worked, and updated the book since its first edition to include the most important features of State, Polity, and Governance in Middle East and North Africa... This book is equally useful for instructors and students." —Jalil Roshandel, East Carolina University In the more succinct Fifteenth Edition of The Middle East, editor Ellen Lust brings important new coverage to this comprehensive, balanced, and superbly researched text. In clear prose, Lust and her contributors explain the many complex changes taking place across the region. All country profile chapters now address domestic and regional conflict more explicitly and all tables, figures, boxes, and maps have been fully updated with the most recent data and information. This best-selling text not only helps readers comprehend more fully the world around them, but it also enables readers to recognize and formulate policies that can more successfully engage the Middle East. Give your students the SAGE edge! SAGE edge offers a robust online environment featuring an impressive array of free tools and resources for review, study, and further exploration, keeping both instructors and students on the cutting edge of teaching and learning.

Combining elements of comparative politics with a country-by-country analysis, author David S. Sorenson provides a complete and accessible introduction to the modern Middle East. With an emphasis on the politics of the region, the text also dedicates chapters specifically to the history, religions, and economies of countries in the Persian (Arabian) Gulf, the Eastern Mediterranean, and North Africa. In each country chapter, a brief political history is followed by discussions of democratization, religious politics, women's issues, civil society, economic development, privatization, and foreign relations. In this updated and revised second edition, An Introduction to the Modern Middle East includes new material on the Arab Spring, the changes in Turkish politics, the Iranian nuclear issues, and the latest efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma. Introductory chapters provide an important thematic overview for each of the book's individual country chapters and short vignettes throughout the book offer readers a chance for personal reflection.