Authors: Hamid Enayat
ISBN-13: 9781850434658, ISBN-10: 1850434654
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: I. B.Tauris & Company, Limited
Date Published: September 2005
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Hamid Enayat was Reader in Modern Middle Eastern History at Oxford University and Fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford. Prior to his death in 1980 he was also Professor of Political Science at Tehran University where he chaired the Department of Politics.
The revival and power of religious feelings among Muslims since the Iranian Revolution presents a complicated and often perplexing picture of the politics of the Islamic world in the modern era. What are the ideas which have influenced the direction of these trends? In this book, Hamid Enayat provides an answer by describing and interpreting some of the major Islamic political ideas, especially those expressed by Iranians and Egyptians, as well as thinkers from Pakistan, India, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Enayat studies the political differences between the two main schools in Islam--Shi'ism and Sunnism, how their ideas have evolved in recent times and how far they have moved from confrontation to convergence. Enayat examines the concept of the Islamic state, and the Muslim repsonse to the challenge of alien and modern ideologies such as nationlism, democracy and socialism, as well as notions of Shi'i modernism, much neglected in Western writings. Enayat's classic work, a lucid and well argued interpretation of modern Islamic political thought, remains indispensable for an understanding of the current politics of the Muslim world.
Introduction : the relevance of the past | 1 | |
1 | Shi'ism and Sunnism : conflict and concord | 18 |
I | The spirit of Shi'ism | 18 |
II | The polemics | 30 |
2 | The crisis over the caliphate | 52 |
3 | The concept of the Islamic state | 69 |
I | Muhammad Rashid Rida | 69 |
II | Fundamentalism | 83 |
4 | Nationalism, democracy and socialism | 111 |
I | Nationalism | 111 |
II | Democracy | 125 |
III | Socialism | 139 |
5 | Aspects of Shi'i modernism | 160 |
I | Constitutionalism | 164 |
II | Tagiyyah | 175 |
III | Martyrdom | 181 |