Suchergebnisse

How have states in the Middle East and North Africa responded to the War on Terror? While much scholarship has focused on terrorism in the region, there is need for critical studies of Middle Eastern states' counter-terrorism policies. This book addresses that need by investigating Morocco's unique approach to counter-terrorism: the bureaucratization of religion. Morocco's strategy is unique in the degree to which it relies on reforms that seek to make the country's religious institutions into tools for rewarding loyalty and discouraging dissent from religious elites. Through these measures they have limited opposition through an enduring form of institutional control, accommodating some of the country's most virulent critics. This book will be of great use to researchers and scholars of Middle Eastern politics, and it will also appeal to those policymakers interested in security studies and counter-terrorism policies

How have states in the Middle East and North Africa responded to the War on Terror? While much scholarship has focused on terrorism in the region, there is need for critical studies of Middle Eastern states' counter-terrorism policies. This book addresses that need by investigating Morocco's unique approach to counter-terrorism: the bureaucratization of religion. Morocco's strategy is unique in the degree to which it relies on reforms that seek to make the country's religious institutions into tools for rewarding loyalty and discouraging dissent from religious elites. Through these measures they have limited opposition through an enduring form of institutional control, accommodating some of the country's most virulent critics. This book will be of great use to researchers and scholars of Middle Eastern politics, and it will also appeal to those policymakers interested in security studies and counter-terrorism policies

AbstractStudies of religious regulation tend to examine how states manage the domestic religious market. This article extends this research program by analyzing a state that regulates the religious markets of foreign countries. The Moroccan case demonstrates the circumstances under which a religious bureaucracy designed to manage domestic religion can be turned outward, and employed to achieve foreign policy goals. Unlike other cases of foreign religious regulation, however, Morocco's efforts have been welcomed at the same time that the policy advanced Morocco's interests. What explains the success of Morocco's religious foreign policy? Building on interviews with religious elites from a recipient country, this article argues that Moroccan religious foreign policy has been successful because it was perceived as having historical and cultural legitimacy, it built on pre-existing institutions, and it was paired with renewed economic collaboration, three factors that have broader theoretical relevance to the study of religious foreign policies.