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Challenging the similarly romantic, a historic and irreconcilable notions of Islamic and Western cultures, this book cuts through conventional wisdom and common cliches to highlight the plurality and historicity of both. For Aziz Al-Azmeh, the Orientalist and racist view of Islam is nothing but the mirror-image of the myths propagated by the Islamic fundamentalists and radicals. In this book he demonstrates both views share an erroneous and an historical conception of Islam as an unchanging and monolithic entity. Moreover, this analysis dissects the mutual implication of both the dominant Western discourse and its supposed primary opponent, postmodernism, in this form of essentialism. There is no one, homogeneous Islam, and this book highlights the diversity and plurality of forms of the Muslim tradition, seeking to understand historically the phenomenon of fundamentalism, amongst other strands, as a profoundly modern ideology. Challenging the stereotypes and legends of both its opponents and proponents, the book traces how political Islam breaks with core elements of the Muslim tradition and, at the same time, roots many of its concepts in European reactionary and romantic thought

Part 1.Sublime Analogies Pagan and Monotheistic --1.Introduction --2.Kings and Gods --Ubiquitous Regalia --Figures of the Sacred --3.Kings in the World --Royal Cosmography --Monotheistic Types --Virtue and Order --4.Interregnum: The Early Muslim Polity --Part 2.Muslim Polities --5.Writing Power --Corpus of Universal Wisdom --Topics of Power --Power Islamised --6.Absolutist Imperative --Power Enunciated --Power Manifest --7.Absolutism Sublime --Sacral Caliphate --Caliphal Kingship --Sultanic Shadow of God --8.Political Soteriology --Hierocratic Saviours --Logocratic Sages?

This book is a translation of Aziz al-Azmeh's seminal work Al-'Ilmaniya min mandhur mukhtalif that was first published in Beirut in 1992. Both celebrated and criticised for its reflections on Arab secularisation and secularism in the modern history of the Arab World, it is the only study to date to approach its subject as a set of historical changes which affected the regulation of the social, political and cultural order, and which permeated the concrete workings of society, rather than as an ideological discussion framed from the outset by the assumed opposition between Islam and secularism. The author takes a comprehensive analytical perspective to show that an almost imperceptible yet real, multi-faceted and objective secularising process has been underway in the Arab world since the 1850s. The early onset was the result of adapting to systemic novelties introduced at the time and a reaction to the perceived European advance and local retardation. The need for meaningful reform, and the actions taken in order to put in place a new organisation of state and society based on modern organisational and educational criteria, rather than older, religious traditions, stemmed from the perceived weakness of Arab polities and from an internal drive to overcome this situation. The book follows these themes into the close of the 20th century, marked with the rise of Islamism. A preface to the English translation takes a retrospective look at the theme from the vantage point of social, political and intellectual issues of relevance today

"Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Arab world has undergone a series of radical transformations. One of the most significant is the resurgence of activist and puritanical forms of religion presenting as viable alternatives to existing social, cultural and political practices. The rise in sectarianism and violence in the name of religion has left scholars searching for adequate conceptual tools that might generate a clearer insight into these interconnected conflicts. In 'Striking from the Margins', leading authorities in their field propose new analytical frameworks to facilitate greater understanding of the fragmentation and devolution of the state in the Arab world. Challenging the revival of well-worn theories in cultural and post-colonial studies, they provide novel contributions on issues ranging from military formations, political violence in urban and rural settings, trans-regional war economies, the crystallisation of sect-based authorities and the restructuring of tribal networks."--Back cover