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Islam between Culture and Politics » (Second Edition)

Book cover image of Islam between Culture and Politics by Bassam Tibi

Authors: Bassam Tibi
ISBN-13: 9781403949899, ISBN-10: 1403949891
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Date Published: November 2005
Edition: Second Edition

Author Biography: Bassam Tibi

Bassam Tibi is Professor of International Relations at the University of Göttingen.

Book Synopsis

Bassam Tibi offers a radical solution to the problems faced by Islam in a rapidly changing and globalizing world. He argues that Islam is being torn between the pressure for cultural innovation and a defensive move towards the politicization of its symbols for non-religious ends. Tibi proposes a depoliticization of the faith and the introduction of reforms to embrace secular democracy, pluralism, civil society, and individual human rights. The alternative to this is the impasse of fundamentalism.

	Introduction : Islam between culture and politics : the scope and implications	1
1	Religion, culture and social reality : Islam as a cultural system, and its diversity	28
2	Cultural patterns and the perception of change in Islam : a religious model for reality : the Islamic worldview	53
3	Culture and social change : tradition and innovation in cultural analysis	69
4	The dichotomy of structural globalisation and fragmenting cultural self-assertion : the case of Islamic civilisation	87
5	The politicisation of religion : political Islam as a defensive-cultural response to global challenges : a social-scientific interpretation	116
6	From religious belief to political commitment : the fundamentalist revolt against the secular order : between cultural modernity and neo-absolutism	131
7	Social change and the potential for flexibility in Islamic law : the Shari'a between ethics and politicisation	148
8	Institutions of learning and education in Islam : between the cultural accommodation of change, religious orthodoxy and the politics of cultural Islamisation	167
9	Islam matters to the West! : Islam and Europe, Islam in Europe : Islamic migration between cultural assimilation, political integration and communitarian ghettoisation	191
10	Islam and the West in the age of conflict among civilisations : the alternative of intercultural dialogue as a means of conflict resolution	210
11	September 11, the global cultural turn and the return of the sacred in Islamic civilisation : between religious revival and the new totalitarianism of political Islam	234