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This book compares Islamic and Western political formulations, highlighting areas of agreement and disparity. Building on this analysis, the author goes on to show that political Islam offers a serious alternative to the dominant political system and ideology of the West. Sabet argues that rather than leading to a "Clash of Civlizations" or the assimilation of Islam into the Western system, a positive process of interactive self-reflection between Islam and liberal democracy is the best way forward. Beginning this process, Sabet highlights key concepts of Islamic political thought and brings them into dialogue with Western modernity. The resulting synthesis is essential reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of Islamic and Middle Eastern politics, political theory, comparative politics and international relations

A review essay on books by (1) Saskia Gieling, Religion and War in Revolutionary Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999); (2) Fred Halliday, Nation and Religion in the Middle East (London: Saqi Books, 2000); & (3) Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics (3rd edition, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999). The review article assesses whether Islam is an "independent" force in Middle East politics or is, by contrast, molded by the social, economic, & political circumstances in the region. It comes down, on balance, in favor of the second view. It uses the books under review, which cover three major areas in the study of international relations, war, the nation-state & nationalism, & human rights, to demonstrate that Islam is malleable to political needs & requirements & can be interpreted to fit with particular historical moments & ideas. Islam's impact on international relations is therefore "unexceptional" in the sense that it can be assessed using universal categories of analysis. The article argues that the approach that focuses on the historicity & flexibility of Islam can be useful for analyzing the role of religion in IR generally. Adapted from the source document.

Eurocentric approaches to political Islam tend to deploy an internalist methodology that theoretically obscures the generative and constitutive role of international relations. This article addresses this problem through a critical application of Leon Trotsky's idea of 'uneven and combined development' to Ayatollah Khomeini's invention of the concept of 'Islamic government'. It argues that this concept was international in its socio-political stimulus and intellectual content, and, crucially, reflected, influenced, and mobilised an emergent liminal sociality that combined Western and Islamic socio-cultural forms. This heterogeneous character of Iran's experience of modernity is, the article argues, theoretically inaccessible to Eurocentric approaches' homogeneous and unilinear conceptions of history, which, as a result, generate exceptionalist modes of explanations. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThis article by an Islamic scholar describes the principles governing international law and international relations from an Islamic viewpoint. After presenting the rules and principles governing international relations in the Islamic system, the author emphasizes the principles of sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of other States and the aspiration of Islam to peace and harmony. He goes on to explain the relationship between Muslims and others in peacetime or in the event of war and the classical jurisprudential division of the world into the abode of Islam (dar al-islam) and that of war (dar al-harb). Lastly he outlines the restrictions imposed upon warfare by Islamic Shari'a law which have attained the status of legal rules.