Unexceptional Politics? The Impact of Islam on International Relations
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298000290030701 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Author | Katerina Dalacoura |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
© Millennium: Journal of Int ernational Studies, 2000. ISSN 0305-8298 . Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 879-887
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Unexceptional Politics? The Impact of
Islam on International Relations
Katerina Dalacoura
Saskia Gieling, Religion and War in Revolutionary Iran (Lond on: I. B. Tauris,
1999, 205 pp., £39.50 hbk.).
Fred Halliday, Nation and Religion in the Middle East (London: Saqi B ooks,
2000, 251 pp., $19.95 pbk.).
Ann Elizabeth M ayer, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics, 3d ed.
(Boulder CO: We stview Press, 1999, 260 pp., £19 .99 pbk.).
Is Middle Eastern polit ics exceptio nal compared to ot her regions of the world? T he
degree to which its societie s are wedded to trad ition; the lack of ro bust democratic
institutions; the unequal position of women; the propensity to political violence;
and t he widespread a ppeal of Islami c fundamentali sm have encoura ged numerous
thinkers and analysts to view the region as an aberration in an o therwise
modernisin g world. They attribute these short comings to Isl am. Islam ha s a
powerful hol d on the imagination and the loyalty of its followers because it enjoins
them to ob ey the word of God, the holy Koran. This in turn means that Islamic
social and politic al practices ha ve been p artly fossilised in the seventh cent ury, a
period during whic h religion and politics were insepa rable.1
Such conventio nal analysis of Middle Eastern politi cs has been countered in
recent time s by thinkers who do not deny the political particulariti es of the M iddle
East but apply universal categories to explain them. Such thinkers have drawn
attention away from Islam as t he central cause of politi cal phenomena. Instead they
have focused on issue s suc h as t he process of state formation; the social and
political distortions caused by oil , whose abundance has co ntributed to the
emergence o f rentier state s; the existence o f Israel and impact of the Cold War on
domestic po litics. From this perspe ctive, Islam is shaped b y politics rather than t he
other way ro und. Islamic fundament alism is an ideology like an y other and Islamic
‘authenti city’ is a myth.2
1. Examples of thinkers of this school inclu de Bern ard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam
(Chicago: Un iversity of Chicago Press, 1988 ) and Elie Kedou rie, Politics in the Middle East (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 199 2).
2. See, for instan ce, Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Prin ceton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1996); Bruce Lawren ce, Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton Uni versity Press, 1998 ); and Sami Zubaid a, Islam, the Peop le, and the Sta te: Political Ideas
and Movements in the Midd le East (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998).
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