Islamic Politics between Dissent and Power: An Overview

Abstract

For much of the last quarter of the twentieth century, Islamic politics appeared to lie beyond the pale of legitimate politics in many Muslim-majority states in the world. That unenviable condition could be glimpsed from several defining moments that encouraged portrayals of Islamic politics as fundamentalism, extremism, radicalism or fanaticism (Said 1997: xiv–xx, xlvii–xlviii, 31–5).1 First, the triumph of the clerics in the revolution in Iran led to authoritarian rule that left little space for non-Islamic pluralist political participation or opposition. Second, Anwar Sadat’s assassination by Islamist militants in Egypt exposed the predilection of some strands of political Islam for armed..