Political Islam Observed - 9780231701785

"Political Islam Observed turns the debate about Islam and politics on its head. By drawing our attention to the impact of disciplinary lenses on the production of knowledge about policies in Muslim societies, Frederic Volpi teaches us to ask better questions about the nature and future of political Islam. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of contemporary Islam and social science methodologies."

Peter Mandaville, director, Center for Global Studies. George Mason University, and author of Global Political Islam

"If the quality of secondary literature determines the maturity of a discipline, then Frederic Volpi's book signals a coming of age in Islamism studies. He provides a multidisciplinary critique that is epistemologically rich and fruitful. By bringing together the major attempts to comprehend political Islam, he demonstrates the phenomenon's complexity and its radical challenge to conventional Eurocentric social sciences. His book is a must read for all interested in political Islam and its place in the world."

S. Sayyid, author of A Fundamental Fear

"Frederic Volpi digs deeper than any other author to dale into the myriad latent issues behind the category of political Islam' and offers us nothing less than the best available map to navigate political tensions and conceptual ambiguities."

Armando Salvaore, author of The Public Sphere; Liberal Modernity. Catholicism, Islam.

Frederic Volpi compares the academic disciplines that "observe" contemporary political Islam to the actual individuals and communities that are being observed by them. Zeroing in on the social sciences and their distinct approach to "Islamic" subject matter, Volpi shows how disciplines analyze political Islam according to their own dominant paradigms. Even with the incorporation of specialist viewpoints, the interdisciplinary drive often results in nothing more than educated guesses geared toward political and public consumption.

Volpi argues that the competition between these paradigms obscures the actual dynamics and cohesiveness of political Islam. He identifies the strengths and weaknesses of disciplinary approaches toward the Islamist phenomenon and takes the first step in developing an account based on post-orientalism, international relations, the sociology of religion, and studies in democratization, multiculturalism, security analysis, and globalization.