Face to Face With Political Islam

by François Burgat

The portrayal of Islamic movements as a tide of religious fanaticism threatening the West, and major participants in the coming "clash of civilizations", has provoked a multifaceted debate of great significance to the future of international relations. This text argues that political Islam's desire to restore a culture distorted by colonization does not necessarily compromise its progress to more democracy and greater tolerance. From Rabat to Gaza, through Algiers and Cairo, the author carried out his enquiry through interviews with prominent Islamists, and he allows them to speak for themselves in the book. Among the issues addressed are the relationship between Islam and modernity, Islamism and women, and questions of violence.

Genres: Islam, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A work of political sociology, Burgat focuses on North Africa and situates the supposedly unique violence of Islamism (political Islam) within a larger climate of pandemic political violence stretching (for his study) from Morocco to Egypt, exercised both by the regime in power and the opposition. Thus, for Burgat the violence is largely political (rather than religious) in origin and reciprocal between regime and opposition, which he describes by claiming that a regime always gets the opposition that it "deserves."