Public Islam and the Common Good (Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia)

Annotation This book explores the public role of Islam in contemporary world politics. "Public Islam" refers to the diverse invocations and struggles over Islamic ideas and practices that increasingly influence the politics and social life of large parts of the globe. The contributors to this volume show how public Islam articulates competing notions and practices of the common good and a way of envisioning alternative political and religious ideas and realities, reconfiguring established boundaries of civil and social life. Drawing on examples from the late Ottoman Empire, Africa, South Asia, Iran, and the Arab Middle East, this volume facilitates understanding the multiple ways in which the public sphere, a key concept in social thought, can be made transculturally feasible by encompassing the evolution of non-Western societies in which religion plays a vital role Anthropologists and scholars of literature mostly from the US and Europe, but also one each from Turkey and Brazil, explore the public role of Islam in contemporary world politics. They look at the diverse invocations of Islam as ideas and practices in civic debate and public life by religious scholars, self-ascribed religious authorities, secular This book shows how competing Islamic ideas and practices create alternative political and social realities in the Muslim majority regions of the Arab Middle East, Iran, South Asia, Africa, and elsewhere in ways that differ from the emergence of the public sphere in Europe. Edited By Armando Salvatore And Dale F. Eickelman. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.