The New Politics of Islam

Abstract

This book, in the words of its author, is the outcome of a protracted intellectual engagement with Islam in world affairs and an attempt to unravel the semantics of civilizational categories (p. 1). Using seemingly Islamic raw material, it incorporates postmodern and identity political analysis, as well as the realist and functionalist investigative tools of social theory, in order to offer a critical study of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) – the interactive “arena” of self-neutralizing pathological Muslim states. The book comprises four chapters plus a concluding summary. Chapter 1 consists of a critical introductory section to the nature of the “problem,” and a literature review that links Islam to the contemporary international relations (IR) discourse and emphasizing its salience. Chapter 2 outlines the pan-Islamic paradigmatic and historical contexts in which the idea of the OIC was conceived and implemented, and points out the interplay of national interests and transcendental religious imperatives. Chapter 3 challenges the myth of Islamic monolithism. Through a policy analysis of case studies of three key Muslim states (viz., Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan), Sheikh attempts to highlight how each state manipulates the OIC in pursuit of its self-defined self-interest. Finally, chapter 4 seeks to mitigate the previous chapter’s hard-nosed geopolitical realist analysis by engaging in the paradigmatic and methodological debates surrounding religious self-identity in foreign policy. The study adopts an “eclectic” methodology that proclaims no specific adherence to any dominant IR research paradigm (p. 19). It seeks to construct/ conceptualize the Islamic narrative as derived from classical theological and jurisprudential treatises, both modified and reapplied in the course of modern history. Subsequently, it attempts to deconstruct this narrative in light of the “true-life” state policy of each case study. Finally it reconstructs the IR discipline by resorting to a sociological understanding of foreign policy that integrates soft ideational and hard material factors (p. 18) ...