Birol Başkan is Non-Resident Scholar at The Middle East Institute. He received his PhD in political science from Northwestern University in 2006 and taught at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Qatar from 2010-2018, Qatar University from 2007-2010, and the State University of New York-Fredonia in 2006-2007. Baskan is the author of Turkey and Qatar in the Tangled Geopolitics of the Middle East (Palgrave, 2016) and From Religious Empires to Secular States (Routledge, 2014), and co-editor of State-Society Relations in the Arab Gulf States (Gerlach, 2014).

• IntroductionHistorical Background: Geography, Political History and IslamismModern Sovereign State Building in the Gulf: From the 1950s to the 1970sGulf States and the Muslim BrotherhoodModern Sovereign State Building in the Gulf: From the 1980s to the 2000sGulf States’ Diverging Attitudes towards the Muslim BrotherhoodThe Arab SpringConclusionBibliographyIndex

With The Politics of Islam, Birol Başkan provides a valuable overview of an important and understudied context of contemporary Islamism. Intense opposition towards the Muslim Brotherhood by governments such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia is a defining aspect of the new political landscape in the Middle East, and this book is a crucial resource for students, researchers, and policymakers seeking to make sense of these developments.