Middle East, Islam, Human Geography, Globalization, Social Sciences 

The idea for this collection is to go beyond the media presentation of the impact of a politicised notion of Islam in the region and to consider the reality that lies behind current issues in the region and the role that an embedded Islam has played or may play. The focus is to be sort of stocktaking of the state of our understanding of the phenomena of the Islamic Revival, the development of Islamic politics or Islamism and attempts of some Islamic intellectual to construct models for the modernization of Islamic society without resorting to westernization models.
There is also revisionism of the understanding of Islam and the intricacies in Islamic studies that has been gathering pace over the past decade. They are studies that ought not to be detached from the political level. A feature of much of the writing and analysis of the 1980’s and 1990s has been traveling repeatedly over the same ground with a focus very much on the violence and conflictual aspects of the Islamic phenomenon. With this collection, it is hoped that the opportunity is presented to look beyond the surface issues to the more fundamental and/or conceptual aspects of this phenomenon which at the same time inform us more realistically about our current world and Islam’s or Islamism’s role in this world.
 

The essays that comprise this study eschew stereotypical representations of a politicized Islam in the Mediterranean Region. The contributors consider the reality that lies behind current issues in the area and the role that an embedded Islam has played or may play in the region. - from Amzon 

Table of Contents
1. The shaping of the current Islamic reformation by B.A. Roberson ................P. 1
2. The politics of the umma : states and community in Islamic movements by Fred Halliday P. 20
3. Sunni and Shiʻi networking in the Middle East by Annabelle Böttcher ...........P. 42
4. New centres and peripheries in European Islam? by Jorgen S. Nielsen .........P. 64
5. From jurists' law to statue law or what happens when the Shariʾa is codified by Rudolph Peters .......................................................................................P. 82
6. Political aspects of modern Shiʻi legal discussions : Khumayni and Khuʾi on ijtihâd and qadaʾ by Robert Gleave .....................................................................P. 96
7. Islamic law as a core for political law : the withering of an Islamist illusion by Ann Elizabeth Mayer .....................................................................................P. 117
8. Arab government responses to Islamic finance : the cases of Egypt and Saudi Arabia by Rodney Wilson ........................................................................P. 143
9. Islam interactive : Mediterranean Islamic expression on the World Wide Web by Gary R. Bunt ........................................................................................P. 164
10. Islamic activism and social movement theory : a new direction for research by Quintan Wiktorowicz. ............................................................................P. 187