ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we looked comparatively at some of the ways Isla-
mist movements have sought to enter the political process in a variety of
countries, how these strategies have evolved over time, and how Islamism
itself may be undergoing certain transformations today. Our analytic per-
spective was predominantly ‘‘bottom up’’ in the sense that we focused on
how political parties and movements within society sought to challenge and
compete with the authority of national-secular states and varying govern-
mental responses to the attempts by Islamists to enter the political field. The present chapter will reverse the analytic lens to focus instead on those
states that have sought to define themselves in terms of Islam, or to pursue
strategies of Islamization as a form of political development or as a means
for assuming and retaining power. While the governments in some of the
countries we looked at in the previous chapter have certainly sought at
times to co-opt Islamists (such as Egypt in the 1970s under Sadat) or to
appropriate Islamic symbols when politically expedient (such as Nasser’s
claims that Pan-Arabism represented a form of ‘‘Islamic socialism’’ or Saddam Hussein’s description of the 1991 Gulf War as a jihad), our pri-
mary interest in the present chapter will be on those nations that have
actually declared themselves to be Islamic states, or where broad, pervasive,
and systematic ‘‘Islamization’’ programs have been implemented. In this
sense, our focus here is on the politics of ‘‘Islam from above.’’
