Islamic Political Thought after the Arab Spring

Abstract

On December 7, 2012, Ermin Sinanovic (assistant professor, Department of Political Science, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD) presented his “Islamic Political Thought after the Arab Spring,” at the headquarters of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT; Herndon, VA). After opening with several questions – How have the events in the Middle East and Arab world influenced and continued to shape Islamic political thought? Why did the Arab Spring happen now? What were the contributing factors? How is Islamic political thought being reshaped by these events? – he began to make his case that the underlying political theory of the Arab Spring represents something new in Islamic political thought. One of his contentions is that traditional Islamic political thought is now seen as out of date, as caught up in the past. This situation began to change first among the Shi‘ah and was instrumental in Iran’s revolution. The Arab Spring has accelerated this reawakening among the Sunnis, which began in the 1970s, thereby showing that Islamic political thought was no longer static. But because this uprising is still so recent and ongoing, scholars are still trying to make sense of it and thus all conclusions up to this point remain tentative ...