Zed Books The Middle East: The Politics of the Sacred and Secular (World Political Theories)

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. The Middle EastThe Politics of the Sacred and SecularBy Shahrough AkhaviZed Books LtdCopyright © 2009 Shahrough AkhaviAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-84277-896-8ContentsAcknowledgments, vii, ONE Introduction, 1, TWO The sacred and the secular, 51, THREE History and social change, 74, FOUR The individual, 119, FIVE Society, 149, SIX The state, 195, SEVEN Conclusions, 234, Notes, 250, Bibliography, 274, Index, 283, CHAPTER 1IntroductionThis book, as part of the World Political Theories series, examines the intellectual debates in contemporary Middle Eastern political theories on such issues as the nature of society, the role of the individual, and the conceptualization of the state. At the same time, it is also my purpose to critique aspects of these theories, in the hope of contributing to the dialogue that their authors deserve in writing them in the first place. This book is not meant to be a sustained engagement with the secondary literature on Middle Eastern political theories.There is a rich store of such literature, beginning in a sustained manner since the early 1960s. Perhaps among the first publications were Albert Hourani's magisterial Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (1962), Serif Mardin's seminal The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (1962), and Malcolm Kerr's innovative Islamic Reform (1966). Some works have been in the nature of edited volumes, such as Kamal Karpat's Political and Social Thought in the Contemporary Middle East (1968, 1982) or Sylvia Haim's more narrowly based collection, Arab Nationalism: A Compendium (1962, 1976). Other works have focused on single societies, such as Anouar Abdel-Malek's Egypt: Military Society (1968). Yet other efforts have been in the tradition of single-authored works influenced by the literature on modernization and development, either in the form of various essays written at different times, such as Leonard Binder's The Ideological Revolution in the Middle East (1964), or a sustained argument presented in the form of a monograph, such as the same author's Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Development Ideologies (1988). Somewhat different from the latter was Hamid Enayat's Modern Islamic Political Thought (1982), and Issa J. Boullata's Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought (1990), both written more from the perspective of the history of ideas. Many works have more recently been published with a focus on Arab nationalism, political Islam (Islamism), and democratization and civil society, such as, respectively, Adeed Dawisha's Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (2005), Basam Tibi's The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New Disorder (2002), and Michaelle Browers, Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities (2006) As a result of all these efforts, the overlap of Middle Eastern studies and social and political theory has become a fascinating and exciting area of research. I hope that the present work will make a small contribution to this steadily growing library of research.The region is, of course, much too large and the period of time too extensive to do more than provide representative coverage. Entire monographs may be devoted to many of these topics or many of the thinkers that I have chosen to focus upon. I have also had to be selective. Thus, I do not discuss the role of women in contemporary political theory; nor do I assess writings on international relations. It is not that these matters are not important. Clearly, they are. But giving them proper consideration would have made an already lengthy manuscript even longer, and one has finally to make choices of inclusion and exclusion. This does not mean that these choices may not themselves be criticized, but that is another matter.Reverting to my initial comment that this volume is part of a series entitled World Political Theories, two factors need to be discussed. First, one must concep