ABSTRACT
The twenty-first century is witnessing the expanding political influence of Islam. This influence is generated through processes of Islamization in various domains including politics, citizenship and cities. To analyze the interrelations between these three domains it is crucial to consider the role of Islamism rather than Islam in shaping – and in return being shaped by – the built environment. The first step of this inquiry is to define Islamism as an ideology that acts as a mode of articulation in the social and cultural realization of Islam (by politicizing it). Departing from this definition, the chapter sets out to provide a framework to scrutinize Islamism’s role in the making of spatial forms, practices and representations of Islamic subjectivities, trajectories and idioms. To do this, it presents three major spheres of analysis to examine the relationship between Islamism and the built environment: the making of Muslim subjectivities, the politics of representation and the production of urban space.
