Islamism: A Documentary and Reference Guide - Hardcover

Calvert, John C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0313338566 ISBN 13: 9780313338564

Publisher: Greenwood, 2007

Synopsis

The past thirty years have witnessed the rise of political parties and other formal groups in the Middle East and elsewhere with Islamic agendas, a phenomenon that has both surprised and frightened many in the West. Events from the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 to the attacks of September 11, 2001, have led some to conclude that the United States is on a collision course with Islam, the religion of one-fifth of the world's population. The sourcebook aims to enhance our understanding of the Islamist phenomenon by presenting some forty documents, written by Islamists themselves, which shed light on the origins, goals, and practices of Islamic-focused groups and movements throughout the Muslim world. Each document is identified and analyzed as to its significance. The documentary section of the work is followed by an extensive bibliography and reference guide of relevant print and electronic resources.

About this title

About the Author

John Calvert is Associate Professor of History at Creighton University. He is the translator and editor of an English translation of Sayyid Qutb, A Child from the Village, the editor of a special issue of Historical Reflections on Islam and Modernity and the translator of several entries in Terrorism: A Documentary and Reference Guide (Greenwood, 2005), among other works.

Reviews

This documentary guide brings together selected primary source materials on Islamist movements, women and family, the revolution in Iran, jihad, and other topics. Each primary source document is preceded by brief headnotes, giving the document’s source, date, place, and significance, and is followed by a couple of pages of content analysis plus a short list of further reading. Islamism offers 41 documents gathered together to “enhance our understanding of the Islamist phenomenon.” Only materials written by Islamists were included, and all of them “shed light on the origins, goals, beliefs, and practices of Islamic-focused groups and movements throughout the Muslim world.” Included are Osama bin Laden’s “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” published in the London press in August 1996 (commonly known as “Declaration of Jihad”), and activist Nadia Yassine’s December 2005 call to Muslim women “to challenge, within an Islamic context, patriarchal readings of the Qur’an.” In those quaint days before the World Wide Web, documentary collections like this were essential tools for serious researchers. Without them, only those scholars with lots of time and lots of money could dig deeply into primary source materials. Nowadays, the question to ask is whether documentary collections add value through careful selection of properly representative documents, coherent thematic grouping, and intelligent analysis. With this perspective in mind, and in view of its reasonable price, this title is recommended for libraries serving advanced high-school and undergraduate college researchers. --Art A. Lichtenstein

Edition details

• Publisher: Greenwood
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0313338566
• ISBN 13: 9780313338564
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 296