ABSTRACT
This chapter represents the last in a series of three thematically organized
accounts of contemporary Muslim politics under various political circum-
stances. We have looked already at the evolution of Islamism as a political
strategy where groups and parties seek to enter the political system (Chap-
ter 4). We then went on to examine how Muslim politics play out in three
countries where the state is, to some degree, defined in terms of Islam. In
this chapter we will be looking at several cases of Islam and politics in set-
tings where a state has collapsed, or due to ongoing military occupation and violent conflict, is functionally absent or, at best, very weak. As we will see,
many of the same discursive and mobilizing mechanisms are at work in
these situations. The political environment of a weak or absent state, how-
ever, often presents Muslim actors with a very different set of opportunity
structures.
