Globalization and Islamism: Beyond Fundamentalism
In this ambitious book, Soguk aims to reveal multiple understandings of Islam from history to present. He is critical of two groups of actors, the Western Orientalists and Wahhabis, for their misrepresentations of Islam. Soguk regards Islamic tradition as much richer than these actors present. The book focuses on two sets of cases to stress some arguably understudied aspects of Islamic thought and Muslim practices. The historical cases include the medieval Islamic philosophers (mutazila), who influenced both Muslim and Christian lands with their rationalist philosophy. The contemporary set of cases is Turkey and Indonesia, which reflect diverse Muslim thoughts and activism in both politics and civil society. . . . This book is good to provoke thoughts on a number of important questions, given its consistent perspective and interesting cases. Summing Up: Recommended.(CHOICE)Nevzat Soguk provides an interesting reading of the relationship and tension between Islam as a religion and Islamism as an ideology. . . . The book is well written, clear, and includes useful boxes that help the reader to navigate within a complex and very condensed history. . . . Overall the book is interesting, provides food for thought and is particularly useful for undergraduate courses on Islam, whether from a historical, sociological or political approach.(MESA Bulletin)Nevzat Soguk brilliantly subverts the conventional 'Jihad vs. McWorld' discussion of Islam and globalization by unveiling both the intrinsic modernity of Muslimness and the Muslimness of modernity. An erudite, highly readable, and thoroughly human account of Islamic cosmopolitanism. (Peter Mandaville, George Mason University; author of Global Political Islam)Globalization and Islamismis a gem of a book. Elegantly written, it effectively tears down essentialist accounts of the so-called phenomenon of 'political Islam.'(Mustapha Kamal Pasha, University of Aberdeen)This book provides the depth and analysis that has been hard to find until now—great text! (Daniel Kirk, Macon State College)An excellent broad approach that spells out individual difference in a comprehendible framework. (John D. Stempel, University of Kentucky)