Islam and the arab awakening
By: Tariq Ramadan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 245
ISBN-13: 9780199933730
Subjects: Democratization; Revolutions; Social movements; Islam
Work titles: Islam et le réveil arabe
Description: One of the most important developments in the modern history of the Middle East, the so-called Arab Spring began in Tunisia in December 2010, bringing down dictators, sparking a civil war in Libya, and igniting a bloody uprising in Syria. Its long-term repercussions in Egypt and elsewhere remain unclear. Now one of the world's leading Islamic thinkers examines and explains it, in this book. Time Magazine named the author one of the most important innovators of the twenty-first century. A Muslim intellectual and prolific author, he has won global renown for his reflections on Islam and the contemporary challenges in both the Muslim majority societies and the West. In this book he explores the uprisings, offering rare insight into their origin, significance, and possible futures. As early as 2003, he writes, there had been talk of democratization in the Middle East and North Africa. The U.S. government and private organizations set up networks and provided training for young leaders, especially in the use of the Internet and social media, and the West abandoned its unconditional support of authoritarian governments. But the West did not create the uprisings. Indeed, one lesson presented here is that these mass movements and their consequences cannot be totally controlled. Something irreversible has taken place: dictators have been overthrown without weapons. But, he writes, democratic processes are only beginning to emerge, and unanswered questions remain. What role will religion play? How should Islamic principles and goals be rethought? Can a sterile, polarizing debate between Islamism and secularism be avoided? Avoiding both naive confidence and conspiratorial paranoia, the author voices a tentative optimism. If a true civil society can be established, he argues, this moment's fragile hope will live.
Table of contents: title: The thick of things. A matter of terminology: revolution/uprising/spring?; title: Predictable, unpredictable?; title: Not Islamist, but Islamic; title: When the other ceases to be the other; title: Cautiously optimistic. Understanding: conspiracy or liberation; title: Differentiated treatments; title: The role of the media; title: Ben Laden's death; title: On the west, politics and economy; title: The challenges of the Arab world; title: Islam, secularization and Islamism. Islam and Islamism; title: Secularization; title: False debates, true debates; title: Two interacting crises; title: A. proponents of secularization and secularity; title: B. proponents of tradition, conservatives and Islamism; title: The islamic reference. The end of political Islam?; title: Towards the "civil state"; title: In the name of justice: thinking out the alternative; title: Social and political issues; title: Economic issues; title: Culture.