Recovering the Somali State: The Role of Islam, Islamism and Transitional Justice

Somalia is often used as an emblem of a collapsed state. This is somewhat of a paradox given that in previous decades the country was one of the most unified states in Africa and one of the first democracies on the continent. In the last three decades however the country has faced enormous challenges including civil wars and extremism in the name of Islam.

The book - probably one of the first to link Islam, Islamism and Transitional Justice with the Somali State recovery project - offers unique analyses of these themes and argues that recovering the Somali state will largely be contingent upon the skillful reconciliation between tradition and modernity, Islam and state and between the secular and the sacred.

Abdurahman Abdullahi (Baadiyow) was born in 1954 in Somalia. He combines rare skills of being a high ranking military officer (1971-1986) with being an electronic engineer, Islamic scholar and socio-political activist. He obtained MA and PhD in Modern Islamic History from the Islamic Institute, McGill University, Canada. He is one of the founders of the Mogadishu University and was a presidential candidate in the 2012 election in Somalia. Currently, Dr. Abdullahi is the vice-chairman of the National Forum Party. Besides his political career and socio-political activism, Dr. Abdullahi is a prominent Islamic scholar and has participated in many academic conferences and published several academic papers, book chapters and general articles in Arabic, Somali and English languages. He is the author of the highly regarded book The Islamic Movement in Somalia: A Study of the Islah Movement, 1950-2000(2015, London, Adonis & Abbey Publishers).