The Politicisation of Islam: Essay on Democratic Governance

The Politicisation of Islam: A Case Study of Tunisia traces the emergence, rise, and recent eclipse of the modern Tunisian Islamic movement, al-Nahda, and provides a comprehensive analysis of its political, social, and intellectual discourse. The first two chapters concentrate on the factors behind the emergence of al-Nahda and its politicization. The three major confrontations between the movement and the Tunisian regime, which culminated in 1991 in the banning of all al-Nahda activities inside Tunisia, is explored in Chapter Three. The author discusses the basic concepts of political Islam in the movement's literature in Chapter Four, in particular the Islamists' rejection of secularism, and al-Nahda's proposal for a modern Islamic state in Chapter Five. In the concluding chapter, the author addresses the Islamists' cultural agenda and their insistence on an Islamic identity for Tunisia.A valuable contribution to the study of political Islam, this is the first complete analysis, in English, of the history of this modern Tunisian Islamic movement.