Over recent decades, Islamism—the belief that Islam should guide social and political as well as personal life—has become a powerful force throughout much of the Muslim world. Through a discussion of the Egyptian case, this essay shows how the rise of Islamism can be illuminated by findings of the literatures on revolution and civil society, and vice versa. As many leading theories on revolutions would predict, the necessary precondition for Islamism's rise has been the declining efficacy and legitimacy of the state. Yet what has occurred in Egypt (and other parts of the Arab world) is not a successful revolution but a peculiar stalemate in which the existing regime retains political power while ceding substantial control over the societal and cultural spheres to the revolutionary challenger—an outcome that the literature does not envision. This stalemate, in turn, is largely a consequence of Islamists' ability to expand their presence in civil society. This expansion in Egypt and other Arab countries over recent decades is thus best understood as a sign not of benign liberalization, but rather of profound political failure, and as an incubator for illiberal radicalism.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3688899.pdf

Islamism, Revolution, and Civil Society

There is a widespread presumption that Islamists have an advantage over their opponents when it comes to generating mass appeal and winning elections. The question remains, however, as to whether these advantages—or, what we refer to collectively as an Islamist political advantage—actually exist. We argue that—to the extent that Islamists have a political advantage—the primary source of this advantage is reputation rather than the provision of social services, organizational capacity, or ideological hegemony. Our purpose is not to dismiss the main sources of the Islamist political advantage identified in scholarly literature and media accounts, but to suggest a different causal path whereby each of these factors individually and sometimes jointly promotes a reputation for Islamists as competent, trustworthy, and pure. It is this reputation for good governance that enables Islamists to distinguish themselves in the streets and at the ballot box.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-polisci-071112-221207

Is There an Islamist Political Advantage

Conceptualizing Counterterrorism and Explaining the Terrorism Phenomenon Olivier Lewis The Socially Constructed Insurgency: Using Social Movement Theory as a Framework for Analyzing Insurgencies Shane Drennan The Crime-Terror-Insurgency "Nexus": Implications for Global Security Daniela Irrera Ideological Motivations of Arab Foreign Fighters as Insurgents and Terrorists: From 1980s Afghanistan to the Syrian Insurgency Roger P. Warren Al-Qaeda: Through the Lens of Global Insurgency Michael F. Morris The Threat of Terrorism to Critical Infrastructure: TEN-R and the Global Salafi Jihad Colin MacLachlin The Power to Hurt Indirectly: Deterrence of Violent Nonstate Organizations by Threats of Domestic-Political Costs Oren Magen Latent Insurgency: Is the Threat of Militant Islamist Groups in Indonesia Diminishing? Paul J. Carnegie Mali's Rebels: Making Sense of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad Insurgency Stewart Webb Crossroads: Tracing the Historical Roots of Modern Insurgency in the Caucasus Chris Murray Lashkar-e-Taiba: Regional Insurgent Group or Emerging International Threat? Stewart Webb The Haqqani Network Threat: Keeping Insurgency in the Family Scott Nicholas Romaniuk and Stewart Webb Manchuria-The Cockpit of Insurgent Empire: A Historical Perspective from the Khitan Liao to the People's Republic of China Christopher Mott From David to Goliath: Chinese Pacification and Counterinsurgency Operations in Modern Wars Francis Grice The "Father-to-Son" War: Burma's Karen Nationalist Insurgency Scott Nicholas Romaniuk An Assessment of the United Nations Counterterrorism Initiatives: 2001-2015 Emeka Thaddues Njoku Insurgencies, Civil Wars, and International Support: Reassessing Evidence of Moral Hazard from the Balkans Marinko Bobic

Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Modern War

The metacolonial state: Pakistan, the Deoband `ulama and the biopolitics of Islam

In recent years, Islam has become highly visible in media, politics, and the marketplace. The increasing popular and academic attention to Islam is partly driven by the events of 9/11 and the related imperative to ‘‘better’’ understand Muslims. The interest is also stimulated by broader socioeconomic developments, in particular neoliberal transformation and the so-called Islamic resurgence. Beginning in the late 1970s and accelerating in the 1980s and 1990s, Islamization has become a major social and political force impacting the Muslim world and beyond. Studies conducted in various fields of social sciences discussed the rise of Islamist movements and the spread of political Islam in connection to globalization and as an expression of resistance to Western-style modernization and secular modernity (e.g. Comaroff and Comaroff, 2000; Dekmejian, 1995; Esposito, 1998). For example, in his influential book, Globalized Islam , Olivier Roy (2004) linked the rise of contemporary Islamism to cultural disruptions and dislocations of a globalizing world, which made people, uprooted from their original cultures, susceptible to ‘‘fundamentalist’’ forms of Islam

/pdf/islamic-encounters-in-consumption-and-marketing-bhw0sa2itj.pdf

Michael Gilsenan

Papers

Islam in revolution: fundamentalism in the Arab world

Class Conflict in Egypt 1945–1970