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What is the Middle East? How can we describe and understand its people, politics and societies? Is it inherently different from the West’? As the whole region stands on the brink of sectarian conflict, these questions demand more attention than ever. In this new updated edition of his seminal work, which has become a key text for anyone seeking to understand the region, Sami Zubaida unpicks the phenomena which have come to define the Middle East in the popular imagination: radical religious movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, authoritarian dynasties like the Sauds, anti-Western demagogues like Irans Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He shows that, far from being an expression of the ‘essential’ character of an Islamic region, they are produced by a series of historical, cultural and economic processes. He highlights the historical, religious and cultural diversity of the region, and argues persuasively against viewing it through the prism of Islam. He shows that movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas are not a rejection of modernity, but a part of it. In a new chapter, he probes the lslamisation of the region which is alleged to have taken place in recent years and argues that a superficial increase of religious symbols in public life masks a more fundamental and irreversible process of secularization.
Contents: Acknowledgments • Introduction to the third edition • The ideological preconditions for Khomeini’s doctrine of government • The quest for the Islamic state: Islamic Fundamentalism in Egypt and Iran • Classes as political actors in the Iranian revolution • Class and community in urban politics • Components of popular culture in the Middle East • The nation state in the Middle East • References • Index
ISBN - 9781845118235
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Pages : 224
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