Remaking Muslim Politics

We can sense, Robert Hefner announces in the introduction to this editedvolume, “a new dynamic of popular participation and contestative pluralism… inspiring dreams of a Muslim politics that is civil and democratic” (p.11). Herein lies the book’s singular thesis. Since 9/11, scholars have spilledenormous quantities of ink in convincing western audiences that radical violenceand ideological intolerance do not characterize mainstream Islam. Yetthe quest to delineate Islam’s compatibility with democracy often meantignoring the complexity of ideas within the stream of democratic Muslimthought. This eclectic collection fills this gap, bringing together twelveauthors who demonstrate the rise of new Islamic voices promoting civic pluralismwithin the boundaries of religious tradition. However, they also showthat such views have triggered fierce contestation from more conservative interlocutors. In laying out a sweeping map of these battles, the volume performsa necessary service to general scholars of Islamic politics ...