Islam, Politics and Social Movements

Abstract

This book contains thirteen well-researched case studies on social move ments in North Africa, India, the Middle East, and Iran. Each movement differs, as the issues and concerns vary according to area. This diversity is made manageable by a neat categorization taking into account geography, periodization, and problematics, for example, and by the editors' clear explanation, in the first part of the book, of how the articles are arranged. In the second part are articles by Von Sivers, Clancy-Smith, Colonna, and Voll. Each author analyzes resistance and millenarian movements in precolonial (i.e., nineteenthand early twentieth-century) North Africa. Part three, with articles by Frietag, Gilmartin and Swdenburg, deals with more contemporary issues, such as Islam and nationalism in India and Palestine. Part four discusses labor move ments in Egypt and northern Nigeria (Beinin, Goldberg, Lubeck), while part five looks at the Iranian revolution and the mles of Imam Khomeini and Ali Shari'ati in defining and inspiring it (Algar, Abrahamian, Keddie). One of the main issues that must be addressed when dealing with social movements in Islamic societies is whether they are really "Islamic" or whether they just happen to be taking place in Muslim Societies. Lapidus, in his introductory essay, brings out the main issues when he says that the movements are studied "in order to explore their self-conception and symbols, the econofnic and political conditions under which they developed, and their relation to agrarian and capitalist economic structum and to established state regimes and elites" (p. 3). The authors look at social, structural, and ideological features without giving exclusive primacy to one or the other. Burke stresses this point. In his article, he discusses methodological issues and places the studies in the context of contemporary modes of analyses such as the "new cultural" and the "new social history" methods inspired by E. P. Thompson and others. This essay is an invaluable introduction to the case studies. Placing the movements in the context of changes occurring in the Islamic world as well as in the context of wider political and social events, the essay allows one to make comparisons acmss the different areas covered in terms of popular culture, patterns of collective action, the problem of Islam and secularism, and other aspects. The articles range from the role of Islamic symbols (i.e., the mosque in India) in articulating new political organizations designed to deal with the ...