This work uses Social Movement Theory to explain the increased political power of Islam in Sudan.

Although regarded as a single community of Islamists, Islamic political movements utilise vastly different means to pursue their goals. This book examines why some Islamic movements facing the same socio-political structures pursue different political paths, while their counterparts in diverse contexts make similar political choices. Based on qualitative fieldwork involving personal interviews with Islamic politicians, journalists, and ideologues - conducted both before and after the Arab Spring - author Esen KirdiAY draws close comparisons between six Islamic movements in Jordan, Morocco and Turkey. She analyses how some Islamic movements decide to form a political party to run in elections, while their counterparts in the same country reject doing so and instead engage in political activism as a social movement through informal channels. More broadly, the study demonstrates the role of internal factors, ideological priorities and organisational needs in explaining differentiation within Islamic political movements, and discusses its effects on democratisation.

Based on fieldwork largely collected during the CPA interim period by Sudanese and European researchers, this volume sheds light on the dynamics of change and the relationship between microscale and macroscale processes which took place in Sudan between the 1980s and the independence of South Sudan in 2011. Contributors’ various disciplinary approaches—socio-anthropological, geographical, political, historical, linguistic—focus on the general issue of “access to resources.” The book analyzes major transformations which affected Sudan in the framework of globalization, including land and urban issues; water management; “new” actors and “new conflicts”; and language, identity, and ideology.

There is very little scholarship on the history of political Islam in Somalia that takes seriously both historical forces as well as the very ideas and internal organization of the Islamic movements. This book reconstructs the history of modern and moderate Islamic movement in Somalia. It covers 50 years of turbulent Somali history, in which civilian governments, military dictatorships, armed opposition factions, and Islamic movements were interacting and shaping the Somali history. It divides Islamic development in Somalia into four historical periods: the Islamic revival (1800-1950), the Islamic consciousness ( 1950-1967), the Islamic awakening (1967-1978) and the Islamic movements (1978-2000).The book provides a detailed and empirically rich narrative of the Islah Movement as a case study which has influenced and made an impact on other Islamist organizations in recent decades. The author provides an insider's view of the Islamic Movement being one of the leaders of Islah.

The book aims to unravel the complexity of dynamics of power, domination, and resistance in Sudan. It will also draw special attention to who rules the country and how they ruled and what tools they deployed to execute their internal, regional, and international policies. Ultimately, by focusing on Sudan, I hope to provide an in-depth understanding of how political Islam operates in practical terms within the Middle East and North Africa.

This book starts from the premise that the study of "exceptionally normal" women and men - as conceived by microhistory - has radical implications for understanding history and politics, and applies this notion to Sudan. Against a historiography dominated by elite actors and international agents, it examines both how ordinary people have brought about the most important political shifts in the country's history (including the recent revolution in 2019) and how they have played a role in maintaining authoritarian regimes. It also explores how men and women have led their daily lives through a web of ordinary worries, desires and passions. The book includes contributions by historians, anthropologists, and political scientists who often have a dual commitment to Middle Eastern and African studies. While focusing on the complexity and nuances of Sudanese local lives in both the past and the present, it also connects Sudan and South Sudan with broader regional, global, and imperial trends. The book is divided into two volumes and six parts, ordered thematically. The first part tackles the entanglement between archives, social history, and power. The second focuses on women's agency in history and politics from the Funj era to the recent 2018-2019 revolution. Part 3 includes contributions on the history and global connections of the Sudanese armed forces. In the second volume, part 4 intersects the themes of urban life, leisure, and colonial attitudes with queerness. In part 5, labour identities, practices, and institutions are discussed both in urban milieus and against the background of war and expropriation in rural areas. Finally, part 6 studies the construction of social consent under various self-styled Islamic regimes, as well as the emergence of alternative imaginaries and acts of citizenship in times of political openness.

This ground-breaking volume on political Islam takes the question of Islam and secularism in an entirely different direction. It shows how leading Islamists use Islamic legal theory to liberate the political sphere from the narrow exegetical worldviews of classical jurists and modern fundamentalists. Exploring the work of a vanguard of Islamists, the book brilliantly parses out the broadlines of these Islamists’ liberal theory and its underpinning legal grounds. This theory promises much. Beyond resolving the problem of political legitimacy in Muslim majority countries, it opens immense potential for reasonable ‘overlapping consensuses’ between traditional worldviews and modern secular perspectives. Most strikingly, this resolution rests not on a break with the Islamic legal heritage but on rediscovering and refining the most profound aspects of it. The secret of this liberal theory lies in the broad application of the medieval concept of maqasid, the Lawgiver’s aims. This approach shifts the focus from textual analysis emphasizing what God said to a systematic rational exploration of what He intended.

The Muslim Brotherhood is often represented in mainstream media as a theocratic organisation that preaches Qur'an-based violence and is out to grab power in the West. As this book shows, such representations are wrought with prejudice and oversimplification; the organisation is in reality much more dynamic and diverse. Its goals, ideology and influence have never been static and vary greatly amongst its descendants in both Europe and the Middle East. Joas Wagemakers introduces the reader to this fascinating organisation and the major ideological and historical developments that it has gone through since its emergence in 1928.

This handbook explores the evolution of African education in historical perspectives as well as the development within its three systems–Indigenous, Islamic, and Western education models—and how African societies have maintained and changed their approaches to education within and across these systems. African education continues to find itself at once preserving its knowledge, while integrating Islamic and Western aspects in order to compete within this global reality. Contributors take up issues and themes of the positioning, resistance, accommodation, and transformations of indigenous education in relationship to the introduction of Islamic and later Western education. Issues and themes raised acknowledge the contemporary development and positioning of indigenous education within African societies and provide understanding of how indigenous education works within individual societies and national frameworks as an essential part of African contemporary society.