Bruce B. Lawrence

Bio: Bruce B. Lawrence is an academic researcher from Duke University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Islam & Ideology. The author has an hindex of 12, co-authored 46 publications receiving 1164 citations.

Defenders of God the Fundamentalist Revolt against the modern age

Abstract: PART ONE: CONTEXT 1. The Making of a Construct: Modernism and Fundamentalism 2. Reinterpreting the Rise of the West 3. Ideology Between Religion, Philosophy, and Science 4. Fundamentalism as a Religious Ideology in Multiple Contexts PART TWO: COUNTERTEXTS 5. The Living Word from the Eternal God 6. Fundamentalists in Defense of the Jewish Collectivity 7. American-style Protestant Fundamentalists 8. Fundamentalists in Pursuit of an Islamic State Conclusion Notes Selected Bibliography Index

Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden

Abstract: Despite the saturation of global media coverage, Osama bin Laden's own writings have been curiously absent from analysis of the "war on terror." Over the last ten years, bin Laden has issued a series of carefully tailored public statements, from interviews with Western and Arabic journalists to faxes and video recordings. These texts supply evidence crucial to an understanding of the bizarre mix of Quranic scholarship, CIA training, punctual interventions in Gulf politics and messianic anti-imperialism that has formed the programmatic core of Al Qaeda. In bringing together the various statements issued under bin Laden's name since 1994, this volume forms part of a growing discourse that seeks to demythologize the terrorist network. Newly translated from the Arabic, annotated with a critical introduction by Islamic scholar Bruce Lawrence, this collection places the statements in their religious, historical and political context. It shows how bin Laden's views draw on and differ from other strands of radical Islamic thought; it also demonstrates how his arguments vary in degrees of consistency, and how his evasions concerning the true nature and extent of his own group, and over his own role in terrorist attacks, have contributed to the perpetuation of his personal mythology.

Muslim networks from Hajj to hip hop

Abstract: Crucial to understanding Islam is a recognition of the role of Muslim networks. The earliest networks were Mediterranean trade routes that quickly expanded into transregional paths for pilgrimage, scholarship, and conversion, each network complementing and reinforcing the others. This volume selects major moments and key players from the seventh century to the twenty-first that have defined Muslim networks as the building blocks for Islamic identity and social cohesion. Although neglected in scholarship, Muslim networks have been invoked in the media to portray post-9/11 terrorist groups. Here, thirteen essays provide a long view of Muslim networks, correcting both scholarly omission and political sloganeering. New faces and forces appear, raising questions never before asked. What does the fourteenth-century North African traveler Ibn Battuta have in common with the American hip hopper Mos Def? What values and practices link Muslim women meeting in Cairo, Amsterdam, and Atlanta? How has technology raised expectations about new transnational pathways that will reshape the perception of faith, politics, and gender in Islamic civilization? This book invokes the past not only to understand the present but also to reimagine the future through the prism of Muslim networks, at once the shadow and the lifeline for the umma, or global Muslim community.

Shattering the Myth: Islam beyond Violence

Abstract: A virtual industry has sprung up in academic and policy circles over Samuel Huntington's 'clash of civilization' thesis. Most of the responses have been punishing critiques of its essentialist tendencies and arguments for more contingent and complex understandings of the role of culture and religion in international conflict and co-operation in the post-cold war era. Yet, curiously but perhaps not surprisingly, Huntington's ideas have had particular resilience when it comes to analyses of Islam. The volumes under review here provide us with some recent additions to this ongoing debate.Of the four books reviewed, one gives an interesting version of Huntington's thesis, two offer critical perspectives on the role of Islam and religion more generally in the modern world, and the last provides a historical chronicle of American foreign policy debates on political Islam from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton. Along the way they reveal interesting insights into how the debate has played out in practice. At the roots of these debates is the extent to which culture and religion are emerging as significant, if not destabalizing, variables in world politics.Political Islam and Global DisorderTibi's The Challenge of Fundamentalism offers a clear and analytically interesting version of Huntington's clash of civilizations thesis. A devout Muslim, Tibi is both an apologist for Islam as a religion and a 'hawk' when it comes to its fundamentalist manifestation. 'For me as a Muslim,' writes Tibi, 'Islam itself, being a tolerant religion, is not and can not be a threat ... But Islamic fundamentalism, or political Islam, is a horse of another colour: this brand of fundamentalism poses a grave challenge to world politics, security, and stability' (p ix).Tibi's starting point for understanding Islamic fundamentalism is the process of globalization, a term he takes great care to define. First and foremost, globalization is intrinsically linked to the spread of modernity around the world. This process has been facilitated by the emergence and promotion of a variety of uniform structures on a global basis that he calls 'institutional modernity.' This is most clearly seen in the political division of the world into secular nation-states, but it has been strengthened in recent years by an acceleration in the global spread of technology and the emergence -- not unrelated -- of a more integrated global economic system.However, the globalization process is incomplete because it has failed to spread the cultural aspects of modernity that will lead to the emergence of universal norms and values at the global level. Cultural modernity, for example, is something more than 'McDonaldization, the drinking of Coca-Cola, or the watching of soap operas on television' (p 25). Rather, it is underpinned by the emergence of individuals who have broken free of their ascriptive civilizational roots and are capable of determining their individual destiny and social and natural environment (p 24). Preventing the more holistic spread of modernity has been the strength of non-Western civilizations -- defined as world-views that unite a variety of different and local cultures. The normative foundations of these world-views are often at odds with those of the West. Suppressed during the bi-polar days of the cold war, they have re-emerged onto centre stage in the global arena. This has created a real potential for conflict, especially between the West, founded on the idea of a secular, democratic nation-state, and Islam, which Tibi sees as having more universalistic, theocratic, if not authoritarian, imperatives.To avoid a civilizational dash, Tibi calls for 'civilizational accommodation' on grounds of mutual equality, respect, and recognition (p 3). This process of accommodation has certainly been made more difficult by the hegemonic nature of Western civilization. Tibi's sympathies clearly lie with the modernity project emanating from the West. …

Beyond Turk and Hindu : rethinking religious identities in Islamicate South Asia

Abstract: This collection challenges the presumption that Muslims and Hindus are irreconcilably different groups, inevitably conflicting with each other. It depicts a neglected substratum of Muslim-Hindu commonality, and demonstrates how the Indic and Islamicate world views overlap and often converge.

The Strategies of Terrorism

Abstract: Terrorism is designed to change minds by destroying bodies; it is a form of costly signaling. Terrorists employ five primary strategies of costly signaling: attrition, intimidation, provocation, spoiling, and outbidding. The main targets of persuasion are the enemy and the population that the terrorists hope to represent or control. Terrorists wish to signal that they have the strength and will to impose costs on those who oppose them, and that the enemy and moderate groups on the terrorists' side cannot be trusted and should not be supported. Each strategy works well under certain conditions and poorly under others. State responses to one strategy may be inappropriate for other strategies. In some cases, however, terrorists are pursuing a combination of strategies, and the response must also work well against this combination.

Intention to choose Halal products: the role of religiosity

Abstract: Purpose – Muslims living in multi-religious societies are considered more conscious about the permissibility (Halal) of products and thus the majority of Halal research in the non-financial sector was conducted in multi-ethnic societies. Nonetheless, the global trade is changing the way we perceive the origin of products and brands and their permissibility under Islamic Sharia laws. This apparently has serious implications for international companies operating in food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of Muslim attitude towards Halal products, their subjective norms and religiosity in predicting intention to choose Halal products. Design/methodology/approach – A structured question was designed to elicit consumer attitude, subjective norms, intention to choose Halal products and degree of inter and intra personal religiosity. Data were collected from 180 adult respondents using a convenience sampling method. Only 150 responses were deemed suitable...

Social Theory and Religion

Abstract: Introduction 1. Religion: a social constructionist approach 2. Secularisation 3. The vagaries of religious pluralism 4. Globalisation and religion 5. Social theory and religious movements 6. Constructing religion, self and society.

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Variation in Western Jihadists’ Choice between Domestic and Foreign Fighting

Abstract: Hegghammer, Thomas. Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Variation in Western Jihadists' Choice between Domestic and Foreign Fighting. American Political Science Review 2013 ;Volum 107.(1) s. 1-15