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Islam and Political Community in the Arab World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Terrance G. Carroll
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Extract

This article attempts to delineate the set of circumstances under which religion acts as a significant conducive factor in the development of Arab political communities, and those circumstances under which religion presents an important obstacle to the emergence of a political community. The focus is restricted to the Arab world so as to permit a more precise analysis than would be possible were one to attempt to generalize across more diverse cultures, but some of its main threads may apply equally well to other peoples and other religions. For the reasons discussed below, religion seems to be a particularly powerful source of individual political identities, and of feelings of membership in political communities.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , May 1986 , pp. 185 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

NOTES

1 See, for example, Halpern, Manfred, The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963);Google Scholar and Smith, Donald Eugene, Religion and Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970).Google Scholar For a survey of the variety of meanings that have been assigned the terms “modernization” and “political development,” see Huntington, Samuel P. and Dominguez, Jorge I., “Political Development,” in Greenstein, Fred I. and Polsby, Nelson, eds., Handbook of Political Science, vol. 3 (Reading, Mass.: Addision Wesley, 1975), pp. 98–114.Google Scholar

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4 Among these are several of the contributions in Esposito, John L., ed., Islam and Development: Religion and Sociopolitical Change (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1980);Google ScholarMacintyre, Ronald R., “Saudi Arabia,” in Ayoob, Mohammad, ed., The Politics of Islamic Reassertion (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 9–29;Google Scholar and Ochsenwald, William, “Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Revival,” International Journal of the Middle East Studies 13, 3 (08 1981), 271–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Ayoob, Mohammed, “Conclusion: The Discernible Patterns,” in Ayoob, , ed., The Politics of Islamic Reassertion, pp. 271–72;Google ScholarAyubi, Nasih N. M., “The Political Revival of Islam: The Case of Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 12, 4 (12 1980), 483–84;Google Scholar and Hudson, Michael C., “Islam and Political Development,” in Esposito, , ed., Islam and Development, pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

6 MacKenzie, W. J. M., Political Identity (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1978), p. 12.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., pp. 157–65.

8 Ibid., pp. 88–98.

9 Rokkan, Stein and Urwin, Derek W., Economy, Territory. Identity: Politics of West European Peripheries (London: Sage, 1983), p. 67.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 68.

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12 Young, Crawford, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), pp. 43–47.Google Scholar

13 The question of control over the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 is an example. In addition to aspirations for territory and security, for religious fundamentalists on both sides there is also an overriding moral or religious issue at stake. Any compromise is seen as religiously repugnant.

14 Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, p. 54.

15 Ibid., pp. 32–33.

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35 Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, p. 15.

36 Carroll, “Secularization and States of Modernity,” 372–73.

37 Lenski, Gerhard, The Religious Factor: A Sociological Study of Religion's Impact on Politics, Economics, and Family Life, rev. ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1963), pp. 319–36.Google Scholar

38 For an analysis of the effects of threat on community formation in Ireland, see Harris, Rosemary, “Community Relationships in Northern and Southern Ireland: A Comparison and a Paradox,” The Sociological Review 27, 1 (02 1979), 41–52;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Carroll, Terrance G., “Northern Ireland,” in Suhrke, Astri and Noble, Lela Garner, eds., Ethnic Conflict in International Relations (New York: praeger, 1977), 27–29.Google Scholar

39 Young, Politics of Cultural Pluralism, pp. 67–73, and 97.

40 The sources consulted on all nineteen countries are too numerous to cite here. For an excellent review of politics in each of these countries excepting Mauritania, see Hudson, Michael C., Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

41 The differing classification of Qatar and Saudi Arabia is based primarily on their distinctiveness from contiguous states, but relative size is relevant too. Similarities with the Saudis may weaken the sense of distinctiveness for the people of Qatar, but the reverse is not true.

42 See the editor's “Preface to the Paperback Edition,” in Haim, Sylvia G., ed., Arab Nationalism: An Anthology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. ix.Google Scholar

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44 Data on successful and unsuccessful irregular transfers of executive powers, on numbers of protest demonstrations, and on numbers of deaths resulting from political violence, are all derived from Taylor, Charles Lewis and Jodice, David A., World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators, 3rd ed., vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). Data are not available for Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The statistical procedure employed is one-way analysis of variance.Google Scholar

45 Segmented societies had the highest frequency of attempted irregular transfers of executive powers, of protest demonstrations, and of deaths resulting from political violence. Countries that are homogeneous but not distinctive in religion ranked second in average number of demonstrations and deaths, and third in average number of attempted irregular transfers. Homogeneous and distinctive societies ranked second on attempted irregular transfers, and lowest on the other two measures.