MER Article Women, Islam and the State Most commentary on gender and politics in the Middle East assigns a central place to Islam, but there is little agreement about the analytic weight it carries in accounting for the subordination of women or the role it plays in relation to women’s rights. [1] Using the Qur’an, Deniz Kandiyoti • 14 min read
MER Article Binder, Islamic Liberalism Leonard Binder, Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Development Ideologies (Chicago, 1988). Sami Zubaida • 6 min read
MER Article Zubaida, Islam, the People and the State Sami Zubaida, Islam, the People and the State: Essays on Political Ideas and Movements in the Middle East (Routledge, 1989). Modem Western literature on political Islam in the Middle East today generally falls into two categories: US-style think tank writing and intellectual proselytism. Think tan Chibli Mallat • 2 min read
MER Article Editor's Bookshelf (July/August 1988) The defeat of the Arab states in the June 1967 war was more than a military setback. It was also a blow against the radical nationalist project and its modern and secular cultural orientation which bonded the Arab world and the West even as it provided a framework for resistance to Western economic, Joel Beinin • 5 min read
MER Article Apprehensions of Islam Bruno Etienne, L’islamisme radical (Paris: Hachette, 1987.) Gilles Kepel, Les banlieues de l’islam: naissance d’une religion en France (Paris: Seuil, 1987.) Michael Gilsenan • 14 min read
MER Article The "Turkish-Islamic Synthesis" The Hearth of Intellectuals, a small organization comprising some 150 conservative journalists, academics and other intellectuals, has functioned as a sort of fountainhead for a new legitimizing ideology for the Turkish Republic. Gencay Şaylan refers to them as the “Turkish Opus Dei” in his 1988 boo Ömer Karasapan, Erkan Akin • 2 min read
MER Article Turkey's Tarikats Tarikats are religious orders established to “search for divine truth.” They have been part of Turkish cultural and social life for centuries. The groups discussed here are Sunni. Turkey’s Shi‘a do have their own religious orders, but as a result of the persecution they suffered during Ottoman rule Ömer Karasapan, Erkan Akin • 3 min read
MER Article The Political Uses of Islam in Turkey For the past several years, the Turkish press has seemed obsessed with irtica, a word of Arabic origin meaning religious reaction and obscurantism. The media has reported incident after incident in which hoca and imam urged their followers not to stray from the path of true Islam, where men and wome Ronnie Margulies, Ergin Yildizoğlu • 12 min read
MER Article Muslim Women and Fundamentalism When analyzing the dynamics of the Muslim world, one has to discriminate between two distinct dimensions: what people actually do, the decisions they make, the aspirations they secretly entertain or display through their patterns of consumption, and the discourses they develop about themselves, more Fatima Mernissi • 10 min read
MER Article From the Editors (July/August 1988) This issue continues MERIP’s inquiry into the dynamic relationship of religion and politics in the Middle East. Our authors pay particular attention to the various ways in which Islam, the dominant religion in the region, enters into the equations of state power and popular opposition in countries a The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Baku's Shaikh-ul-Islam Shaikh-ul-Islam Pashazada Allahshukur Hummatoglu is chairman of the Board of Management of Caucasian Muslims. Fred Halliday and Maxine Molyneux interviewed him in Baku in July 1984. How are Soviet Muslims organized? There are four separate Islamic religious bodies in the Soviet Union. Three of the Maxine Molyneux, Fred Halliday • 3 min read
MER Article Mortimer, Faith and Power Edward Mortimer, Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam (New York: Random House, 1982). Bassam Tibi • 6 min read
