The last few years have witnessed immense changes in Islamist political movements in the Middle East. Recent developments motivated the Project on Middle East Political Science and the Transatlantic Academy to bring together more than a dozen International Relations theorists and specialists on the Islamic world for a sustained discussion of emerging questions on Islam and international order. This workshop enabled participants to reflect upon the literature on religion and international relations, to identify key trends and conceptual developments going forward, and to advance the dialogue between different research traditions. Participants contributed memos on new theoretical challenges and policy dilemmas posed by the evolution of Islamist political movements. These memos are posted here individually and as POMEPS Studies 15, a free PDF download.
“Frames at Play: Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism,” by Nora Fisher Onar, University of Oxford
“Rethinking religion and politics: Where the fault lines lie in the Arab world,” by Nathan J. Brown, George Washington University
“Are Muslim countries really unreceptive to religious freedom?” by Daniel Philpott, University of Notre Dame
“How international relations got religion and how it got it wrong,” by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Northwestern University
“How to interpret Iran’s Islamic rhetoric,” by Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar, Texas A&M University
“Tracking Iranian cosmopolitan options: At home and abroad,” by Bruce B. Lawrence, Duke University
“How the two big ideas of the post-Cold War era failed,” by Amitav Acharya, American University
“Five reforms the Muslim Brotherhood must undertake: lessons from the Egyptian Spring,” by Muqtedar Khan, University of Delaware
“Why ISIS is not all of political Islam and what it means for democracy,” by Jocelyne Cesari, University of Birmingham and Georgetown University
“The Islamic State as an ordinary insurgency,” by Reyko Huang, Texas A&M University
“The jihadi threat to international order,” by Barak Mendelsohn, Haverford College
“What history says about the prospects for Islamic democracy,” by John M. Owen, IV, University of Virginia
Read more on the evolving nature of Islamist politics in POMEPS Studies 6 “Rethinking Islamist Politics” and POMEPS Studies 12 “Islamism in the IS Age.”