ABSTRACT
Approaches to the study of Islamic movements commonly focus on political Islam as an anti-Western ideology, rather than as a dynamic sociological phenomenon reflective of the political and socio-economic conditions experienced by many Muslims. Most of the questions Western academics have grappled with since the ousting of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt have had to do with the nature of ‘Islamic resurgence’. Media commentators and non-specialists who became instant experts on Islam have anxiously asked: Will political Islam replace Arab dictators? What is going to happen when political Islam has to wrestle with modernity and globalization? Can the Muslim Brotherhood lead a pluralistic Egyptian society? What new aspects of the ‘clash of civilizations’ will evolve in the Arab Spring? Certainly, the initiation of such questions is not new. But the dissemination of a monolithic Islam has resulted in what John Esposito calls ‘religious reductionism’, a common analytic framework that views political conflicts as representations of religious ones.1 Focusing on the cultural and religious aspects of Islam and the nation-state has reduced Islamic movements to a homogenous religious discourse that is rarely explored in tandem with migration movements, economic hardships and diaspora relations.
