Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle over Islam Is Reshaping the World

Starting with the premise that Islam is distinctive among all other world religions due to the primacy of transnational political goals, Hamid (Temptations of Power) attempts to untangle the knot of current Islamist statecraft throughout the Middle East. While considering different models of political formulations of Islam—in Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq—he problematizes simplistic conceptions of Islamism (which he defines as a project reconciling “the premodern Islamic tradition with the modern tradition of the nation-state”) and delineates how Islam and democracy might coexist in an age of insurgent ideology and the current “clash of values” between Islam and “the West.” Hamid believes the path forward is complex and messy, contending that Islam is exceptional in its political manifestations and must not be compared to secular notions of liberal democracy. Hamid’s work offers a tempered, well-researched analysis of Islamism in its current state and offers tentative hopes for those seeking a new way through the intricacies of Islamic politics in the Middle East. (June)