Islam and Secularism in the Middle East - Softcover

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Softcover

ISBN 10: 1850655413 ISBN 13: 9781850655411

Publisher: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 2000

Synopsis

Secularism has often been regarded as a positive achievement of Western civilization. The separation of church and state, the rule of law, enhanced state power and authority, toleration of religious sects within an independent civil society, the citizen's freedom from organized religion, the relegation of religious belief to the private sphere - all such "secularizing trends" are perceived as benefits. However in the Arab Middle East, Western-inspired secularism is increasingly cited as the source of the region's social dislocation and political instability. This text is a contribution to such a debate. It examines the origins and growth of the movement to abolish the secularizing reforms of the past century by creating a political order guided by Shariah law.

About this title

About the Author:

AZZAM TAMIMI is Director of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought and is a writer on Islam and Middle East Issues.

Review:

-Campus Progress,

"In Another Country, Herring responds to gaps that urban-centered studies have left opened in queer histories . . . Herring's work evidences a fierce commitment to existing queer metropolitan-migration narratives, favoring the backward, rustic and unfashionable, and embracing these stereotypes for their own subversively disruptive potentials. His quality content analysis and skillful ability to anticipate counter-arguments and avoid intellectual pitfalls keeps the reader on her toes."-Jaime Cantrell, Feminist Formations

"Scott Herring presents an exquisitely detailed road atlas of the complicated intersection between topography and destiny."
-Alison Bechdel, author of "Fun Home" and "Dykes to Watch Out For"

"Reading across the genres of literature, print and visual media, photography, and fashion, Scott Herring not only complicates the queer's move from rural to urban space, but also the ways in which queers in 'othered' spaces enact an anti-urbanism through their own 'rural stylistics.' Another Country is fierce!"
-E. Patrick Johnson, author of "Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South--An Oral History"

"Writers, artists, and activists have worked throughout the past century to imagine and materialize sustainable queer lives everywhere from Oregon to Pennsylvania, from Iowa to Alabama. Herring provides the definitive account of the myriad ways that LGBT people have constituted non-urban sites as vibrant and sexy spaces of resistance to hetero- and homonormativity, to compulsory consumerism, and to entrenched hierarchies of race, class, gender, and ability. In so doing, Another Country redraws the map of contemporary queer studies."
-Robert McRuer, author of "Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability"

About this edition

• Publisher: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1850655413
• ISBN 13: 9781850655411
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224