Globalization and Islamism

Nevzat Soguk is professor of political science at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa.

• Introduction: Islam, Islamism, and GlobalizationChapter 1: Islamic Globalism UnveiledChapter 2: Histories Untold: The Irresistible Charm of Islamic CosmopolitanismChapter 3: Islamic Intellectual Legacies: Modern Amnesia and Political PhilosophyChapter 4: Crossroads of Global Islam and Islamism in TurkeyChapter 5: Archipelagos of Islam in IndonesiaChapter 6: Radical Vanishing: Islam into Global CommonspacesBibliography

In this ambitious book, Soguk aims to reveal multiple understandings of Islam from history to present. He is critical of two groups of actors, the Western Orientalists and Wahhabis, for their misrepresentations of Islam. Soguk regards Islamic tradition as much richer than these actors present. The book focuses on two sets of cases to stress some arguably understudied aspects of Islamic thought and Muslim practices. The historical cases include the medieval Islamic philosophers (mutazila), who influenced both Muslim and Christian lands with their rationalist philosophy. The contemporary set of cases is Turkey and Indonesia, which reflect diverse Muslim thoughts and activism in both politics and civil society. . . . This book is good to provoke thoughts on a number of important questions, given its consistent perspective and interesting cases. Summing Up: Recommended.