ABSTRACT
This book has covered considerable ground in seeking to understand the nature of contemporary Muslim politics. We began by tracing the intellectual and political roots of modern Islamism in the context of state formation in the Muslim world. We then examined various explanatory accounts of Islamism, before moving on to the first of several case studies. After working through multiple examples of Islam and politics in the system, as the system, and in the absence of a system, we moved on to analyze the nature of today’s transnational Islamic radicalism. An examination of several other major spaces and institutions through which Muslim politics occur today brought us, in the previous chapter, to examine the arguments of those who argue that we have entered the age of “post-Islamism.” It has become clear, through our wanderings across the many terrains of Muslim politics, that we are not dealing with a monolithic phenomenon. Islam and politics commingle in almost infinite variety across a vast range of settings, issues, actors, and levels of analysis.
