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In the study of Muslims in post-independence Ghana the growth and proliferation of new Islamic movements, as a by-product of Kwame Nkrumah's foreign policy, is an issue worthy of academic attention. This foreign policy, inclined towards engaging with Africa and Muslim countries (Saudi Arabia, Iran and Libya, among others) attracted movements such as Salafism, Shi´ism and the Third Universal Theory of al-Qadhafi's Green Book into the Ghanaian religious sphere, where the Tijaniyya already played an important role. While these new movements drew inspiration from external points of orientation, their proliferation depended on the local context. The activists of the Fayda Tijaniyya and the Salafis were successful with their agenda and approach primarily due to the competing scholarly interpretations they offered and their modernised approach to propagation. Though Shi´i revivalism in recent times has combined traditional and secular education, its influence in the broader Ghanaian religious sphere is yet to be tested. The Green Book offered a particular political dimension to the Islamic revival, and some Ghanaians were influenced by its ideas on political participation. Dr Yunus Dumbe is a lecturer at the Department of Religious Studies in the Islamic University College, Accra. He specialises on Islam in Africa, particularly Ghana and South Africa. Between 2011 and 2013, he was a guest scholar at the Department for the Study of Religions at Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden.

Daß Demokratisierung in der islamischen Welt fundamentalistischen Strömungen nützt und dadurch in der Folge selbst ihr Scheitern herbeiführt, ist keineswegs zangsläufig, wie das Beispiel der Gama'at-i Islami in Pakistan zeigt: Hier haben die Realitäten des politischen Prozesses unter relativ offen-pluralistischen Bedingungen (auch in den Phasen von Militärherrschaft) die Abkehr von einem doktrinären Fundamentalismus erzwungen. Radikalisierung ist eher von einem Ausschluß vom politischen Prozeß zu befürchten. (SWP-Whr)

How does ideology function during periods of political and economic turmoil? This book, based on long-term ethnographic research in a destitute former mining town in Kyrgyzstan, testifies to the precariousness of life in the former Soviet republics in the decades after the collapse of the USSR. It follows inhabitants as they make sense of a radically changing world and as they try to imbue their lives with relevance and direction, while concentrating in depth on their engagement with a range of religious ideas and other ideological currents, including scientific atheism, evangelical Christianity, Sunni Islamic revivalism, and traditional shamanistic beliefs. By examining such a broad variety of belief systems and how they manifest themselves in daily life, the author provides new insights into how ideology works (or fails to work) and how cultural and religious convictions are collectively produced and shaped.

The article tries to examine the rise of Islamism in Pakistan and argues that much of Islamic revivalism in Muslim countries like Pakistan is strongly related to power politics and personal gains of politicians and how political leaders use religion to suit their own needs to consolidate their own power base, especially when it lacks political legitimacy. The more democratic the regime, the less politicians feel the need to incorporate Islamist groups in their own power base and vice versa. We see this process of using Islamist groups to further one's own needs happening since the creation of Pakistan and it reaches a peak during the times of General Zia-ul-Haque in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The article is especially interested in the role of the Jamaat-i-Islami and its interactions with different political leaders from independence till Musharraf. Although the article acknowledges that Islamism is multidimensional and that there are many factors associated with its rise but because much of it is inextricably linked with power politics and personal gains of both political and religious leaders and both groups benefiting from this symbiotic relationship, the problem of Islamism could be solved to some degree by making the government more accountable to the people by responding to demands coming from below and the need for stronger democratizing tendencies. The article makes use of a range of both primary and secondary sources to substantiate its key arguments.