The Ulama in Contemporary Islam by Muhammad Qasim Zaman

The initial essay is particularly well-crafted, substantial enough to be recommended on its own to those who want to learn more about the diversity of contemporary Islamic political thought and the complicated relationships between its various competing and overlapping strands.

Because these chapters are themselves no more than 15-20 pages of primary source material, the editor-provided 'context' makes up at least one third of this 475-page volume. Along with an extensive essay at the beginning of the book, the editors have included 6-10 page introductions for each of the eighteen chapters. As their subtitle suggests, this volume includes both texts and contexts, and it is the latter that mark its unique contribution. While this sort of collection would be valuable in its own right, Euben and Zaman have given us something far more significant. 3).Īt first glance, this book appears to be a straightforward collection of primary source material drawn from a veritable 'Who's Who' of contemporary Islamic extremists. as an explicit guide through the haze of polemic, fear, and confusion swirling around the subject of Islamism in the early twenty-first century' (p. They have, for the most part, succeeded in producing a text that functions as 'an implicit corrective to. Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman have edited a volume that will reduce, rather than perpetuate, this confusion. This has left many deeply confused about various strands of contemporary Islamic political thought and their relation to one another.

Over the previous ten years, much has been written about tensions between 'Islam' and the 'West' that oversimplifies and obfuscates. Yet, great interest is often a catalyst for discourse that is heavy on polemic and short on substance. We are then justified in our continued curiosity about this thought and the ways it might motivate violent resistance to the institutions and values many of us hold dear.

The recent ten-year anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the demise of Osama bin Laden, and the growing unrest of the so-called 'Arab Spring' remind us-if indeed we have ever forgotten-that certain forms of Islamic political thought have reconfigured 'the twenty-first century geopolitical landscape in unprecedented ways' (p. While some might consider the continued use of this trope cliched, current events make it difficult to abandon altogether. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.įor many years now, scholarship on Islamic political thought has been praised for its timeliness. Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from al-Banna to Bin Laden.

The Ulama in Contemporary Islam by Muhammad Qasim Zaman