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Examines the operation and limits of constitutional courts in the Arab world, showing that they can move in constitutionalist directions even in an authoritarian context, but also that they may restrict popular majorities and serve autocrats.

The Islamic shariʿa is central to Islam in the minds of most Muslims and non-Muslim scholars. In many ways, the centrality of the Islamic shariʿa has increased in recent decades. Yet despite—or perhaps because of—this centrality, the precise, even the general, role of the shariʿa in Islamic societies is the subject of contentious debate among Muslims. Outside of and underlying such debates are more subtle and rarely articulated differences about the meaning of the Islamic shariʿa. In this essay, I will put forward a general intellectual map for those varying meanings. More critically, I will suggest that important shifts in the meaning of the Islamic shariʿa have taken place in the Muslim world, and that these shifts are closely connected to the nature and viability of legal and educational institutions associated with the Islamic shariʿa in the past. As the Islamic shariʿa has become disconnected from these institutions, its meaning has changed in some fundamental ways. Most important, the shariʿa is approached less for its process than for its content. And because the shift in institutions and understanding has received much less attention from Muslims, widespread attempts to re-create older relationships (particularly involving the relationship between the Islamic shariʿa and the state) in fact involve a deepening rather than a counteracting of the transformation in the Islamic shariʿa.

Over the past century, most states of the Middle East have attempted to strengthen and centralize their legal systems, often following European models. Egypt undertook one of the first steps in that direction with its mixed-court system. These courts, which had jurisdiction in civil and commercial cases that involved a foreigner, however remotely, operated from 1876 until 1949. That this system could survive the political turmoil of those years, far outliving the circumstances which brought it into being, is remarkable.

Many residents of the Middle East - and more recently, Western powers - have placed great hope in democratization in the region. Bringing together a number of experts on the region to provide a broad ranging survey of individual countries, this book examines the experiences of activists, parties, religious groups and governments, the influences exerted on them and the difficulties involved in bringing democracy to the Middle East.

In recent decades, Islamist political movements in many Arab countries have strategically invested in a political process that was stacked heavily against them. And, to the surprise of many, they have actually succeeded by gaining more seats in parliaments and demonstrating their position as the only opposition movements with a popular base. Between Religion and Politics is a broad, cross-national study of Islamist parties in Arab parliamentary elections. The book focuses on those movements that have cast themselves, at least in part, as electorally oriented political parties. It pro

Rezension von: Halevy, E.: Israel's Hamas portfolio. - In: The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs(Jerusalem). - 2 (2008) 3. - S. 41-47

Abstract: What role do mainstream Islamist movements play in Arab politics? With their popular messages and broad social base, would their incorporation as normal political actors be the best hope for democratization or democracy's bane? For too long, we have tried to answer such questions solely by speculating about the true intentions of the movements and their leaders. Islamists in the Arab world are increasingly asked about their true intentions. To hear them tell it, leaders of Islamist movements in the Arab world are democrats without democracy: they are firmly committed to the outcome of clean and fair electoral processes. It is rulers and regimes that should be pressed on their democratic commitments, not their oppositions.