17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 9

ISLAM, POLITICAL CHANGE

AND GLOBALIZATION

Saïd Amir Arjomand

ABSTRACT This article examines the ways in which Islamic civilization has
faced the challenges of the modern age and of globalization. The expansion of
Islam in world history is itself a global or proto-global process with its own dis-
tinctive internal dynamics. The main challenge to modern Islam, coming from
the global political culture in the form of constitutionalism and democratization
and human rights, has set in motion a civilizational encounter that has signifi-
cantly altered the politico-religious dynamics of the proto-global, pre-modern
Islamic pattern. The intermingling of these inter- and intra-civilizational pro-
cesses is traced with respect to the subversion of constitutionalism by ideology
during the 1945–1989 period, and the slow recovery of the rule of law since
1989. The same framework of civilizational analysis is used for understanding
Islamic fundamentalism, and counter-global defensive developments in con-
temporary Islam.
KEYWORDS civilizational processes • fundamentalism • Islam • political
modernization • universalism

Has Islamic civilization met the challenges of the modern age and of
globalization? Can civilizational analysis offer a dispassionate answer to this
controversial and intensely politicized question? The first step toward doing
so is to decide what the challenge is. One readily available, if dated, paradigm
considers the Islamic ethos in relation to capitalism (Rodinson, 1973; Turner,
1974). As I do not consider economic development the main challenge to
Islam in the modern era, and do not find the effects of integration into the
global economy particularly significant, I will not use this model. In my
judgment, the major challenge has rather been in the political and legal
sphere. Here we have the widely alleged incompatibility of Islam and democ-
racy, though it is hard to think of a compelling analytical model. I therefore
propose a completely different hypothesis. The expansion of Islam in world
Thesis Eleven, Number 76, February 2004: 9–28
SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications and Thesis Eleven Co-op Ltd
[0725-5136(200402)76;9–24;040108]DOI:10.1177/0725513604040108
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 10

10 Thesis Eleven (Number 76 2004)

history is itself a global or proto-global process with its own distinctive

internal dynamics. This old pattern of internal dynamics remains operative,
helped by some new factors and hindered by others. Two new and external
global factors have, however, impinged upon it since the middle of the 19th
century. The first is the rule of law and the political culture of the international
system of the nation-states; the second, the new global wave of constitu-
tionalism since 1989. In these two periods, the external challenge of the
global political culture, originating in the West, has significantly altered the
politico-religious dynamics of the pre-modern Islamic pattern.
Thinking about Islam and globalization forces us to decide when we
first find the latter process in human history. In this regard, Therborn’s (2000)
extension of Robertson’s (1993) schema for the phases of globalization back
to the era of expansion of the world religions makes good sense. The mis-
sionary expansion of the world religions among nations and across the fron-
tiers of empires can clearly be considered the prototype or the earliest instance
of the process of globalization. As Weber explained, the world religions of
salvation have a tendency toward missionary expansion because they are, in
principle, universalistic. The universalism of the world religions gives them a
built-in tendency to overcome many forms of particularism and expand
beyond familial, ethnic and national boundaries. In practice, needless to say,
the ideal commitment to universalism is tempered by all sorts of compromises
with the forces of particularism. But these very compromises transform the
character and terms of reference of particularism from local to ‘glocal’.
In the old pattern of religious universalism, religion is the motive force,
the cause, of universalization and globalization. Globalization in its later
waves, by contrast, is a much broader process. It is set in motion not by
religion, but by new cultural and especially technological forces that are
entirely secular. The emergence of fundamentalist movements is often attrib-
uted to the impact of globalization on the religious sphere. From this perspec-
tive, fundamentalism is, at least in part, a consequence of globalization. As
we shall see, globalization is not the only factor, and other forms of social
change are also important causes of the contemporary resurgence of Islam
and the growth of Islamic fundamentalism. Nevertheless, the impact of
globalization on Islam has its own dynamics, and is now added on to the old
dynamics of the universalist expansion of Islam, complicating the old pattern
but by no means obviating it. It can indeed be argued that the great theor-
etical interest of contemporary Islam stems from the intertwining of the
dynamics of the old universalism and the new fundamentalism.
The effects of globalization on Islam are interpreted very differently by
different observers. Eickelman (1998) sees the combined effect, on the
world’s one billion Muslims, of globalization, the growth of education and
vigorous discussion of Islam in books and in public debates in the press and
the media as the making of an Islamic Reformation. The Islamic reform
movement of the last decade in Iran provides supportive evidence for this
view, as it undoubtedly makes a radical break with the apologetic Islamic
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 11

Arjomand: Islam, Political Change and Globalization 11

modernism of the mid-20th century (Arjomand, 2002). According to Eickel-

man, the current Islamization of social life has been far-reaching but also
dispersed, lacking any focus or single thrust. For Barber, by contrast, globaliz-
ation puts Islam in the front line of the ‘Jihad versus McWorld’. He sees the
effect of globalization concentrated in a sharply focused and vehement ‘anti-
Western anti-universalist struggle’ (Barber, 1995: 207). In his last work, the
late Ernest Gellner (1981) did not make a distinction between Islamic funda-
mentalism and the general scriptural Islam of the cities, and considered what
he had earlier called Islamic permanent reformation the major obstacle to
modernity. Islam was in this later version a Protestantism of sorts, but its law
atomized and stultified society and prevented the growth of political insti-
tutions (Gellner, 1994). Along similar lines, Barber obliterates the distinction
between Islamic fundamentalism and Islam. His central chapter is entitled
‘Essential Jihad: Islam and Fundamentalism’. The emphasized connective is
significant: all Islam is Jihad; fundamentalism refers to Jihad elsewhere,
especially to the struggle of American fundamentalists against the global
McWorld. It is Islam which ‘nurtures conditions favorable to parochialism,
anti-modernism, exclusiveness and hostility to “others” – the characteristics
that constitute what I have called Jihad’ (Barber, 1995: 205).
I believe Barber’s view on Islam and globalization, which is widely
shared by journalists and commentators, is fundamentally mistaken. Not only
is there variety in Islamic fundamentalism (Arjomand, 1995), but Islamic
fundamentalism is by no means identical to all the contemporary mani-
festations of Islam as a universalist religion. Urbanization, development of
roads and transportation, the printing revolution and other contemporary
processes of social change, including globalization, simply reinforce trends
toward expansion and intensive penetration of society that are typical of
Islam as a universalist religion. These trends remain distinct and are not
swamped by fundamentalism. One would therefore have to agree with
Eickelman on the dispersion of the current trends in Islamization, whether
or not one concurs with his value judgment that they constitute Reformation.
One important question remains to be answered, however: how does
globalization affect the old Islamic universalism?

I. GLOBALIZATION AND THE DYNAMICS OF ISLAM AS A

WORLD RELIGION
Elsewhere, I have sketched the old pattern of the geographical expan-
sion and intensive penetration of Islam since its rise (Arjomand, 1995, 2003a).
The pattern could be said to represent the internal dynamics of Islam as a
world religion, which expanded through conversion by sects and Sufi
orders, and penetrated Muslim societies more intensively through orthodox
reform and puritanical proto-fundamentalist movements such as medieval
Hanbalism. In the early modern period, we find clear evidence for an
increased internal globalization of Islam, or of sub-globalization within the
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 12

12 Thesis Eleven (Number 76 2004)

Islamic world. Improved sea transportation in the 17th, 18th and 19th cen-
turies facilitated international contact among Muslims and stimulated trans-
national movements for orthodox reformism and renewal (tajdid) in Asia,
including the so-called neo-Sufi movements of the early 19th century, the
Caucuses and North Africa (Voll, 1982). In the same era, we find the jihad
movements in Sumatra and Nigeria, which combine orthodox reformism with
polity-formation. Keddie (1994) sees the expansion of foreign trade, result-
ing from the European colonial conquests and naval expansion, as a stimulus
to these movements in the periphery of the Muslim world.1
In the 19th century, an external factor is clearly grafted upon the internal
dynamics of the expansion of Islam: imperial conquests and cultural domi-
nation. The above-mentioned movements in the periphery of the Muslim
world merge with the jihad and the Mahdist movements, which Keddie
presents as two permeable types of Islamic movements in response to
imperialist conquests, and explains by the effective instrumentality of ‘a
unified Islamic ideology . . . for a war against infidels and also for state
building’ (Keddie, 1994: 481). Meanwhile, at the declining centers of Muslim
imperial power, the international political culture impinged upon the Muslim
Middle East with the spread of constitutionalism and the civil rights to the
security of life and property. In the second half of the 19th century, Islam
thus faced the political and cultural challenge of the West. The Muslim
response to this challenge in the urban centers can be simplified into three
main types of reaction: secularism, Islamic modernism and Islamic funda-
mentalism. Since the Second World War, this cultural and institutional
response to Western domination has been deeply affected by an increasing
vitality of Islam, which is firmly rooted in contemporary social change.
In the 20th century, the old pattern of expansionist vigor of Islam and
its intensive penetration of Muslim societies remained unimpaired for all but
the upper social strata. In fact, the old dynamics of the expansion and
intensive penetration of Islam were reinforced by three interrelated and
chronologically overlapping contemporary social processes, namely (1) urban-
ization; (2) the growth of a religious public sphere with the development of
transportation, communication and the mass media; and (3) the spread of
literacy and education. The old historical relationship between urbanization
and the growth of scriptural Islam (Arjomand, 1986) holds for the period of
rapid urbanization after the Second World War as well. Furthermore, con-
siderable spread of literacy and expansion of higher education have occurred
in all Muslim countries at the same time as rapid urbanization, and have inde-
pendently contributed to the Islamic revivalist movements. An increase in the
publication and circulation of religious books and periodicals and the growth
of Islamic associations in the universities are correlates of this process.
In the 20th century, we also find a combination of internal sub-
globalization typical of the early modern period and externally stimulated
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 13

Arjomand: Islam, Political Change and Globalization 13

globalization. On the one hand, continuous improvement and declining cost of

transportation since the Second World War has greatly increased the number of
pilgrims to Mecca, and of missionaries from Africa and Asia to the main centers
of Islamic learning in the Middle East. It should be noted that this aspect of
globalization reinforces Islam’s old universalism institutionalized around the
Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). On the other hand, the post-colonial era has wit-
nessed massive immigration of Muslims into Western Europe and North America
where sizeable Muslim communities have been formed. Meanwhile, there has
been unprecedented global integration of Muslims through the mass media.
The international repercussions of the Rushdie case are the best illustration
of the impact of the media on a globally integrated Muslim world. The protests
and burning of his Satanic Verses by indignant Muslims began in Bradford,
England. These were broadcast throughout the world and stimulated violent
protests in Pakistan and India. At a particularly low point of Iranian post-
revolutionary politics, after the book had been banned in India, South Africa,
Bangladesh, Sudan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini broad-
cast his famous fatwa on 14 February 1989 condemning Salman Rushdie, a non-
Iranian writer who lived in England, to death for apostasy.
The modern replication of the old pattern of intensive penetration of
Islam has, however, been entwined with the impact of the international
political culture of the era of nation-states. This impact has added one new
and modern element. The resurgence of Islam, sustained by urbanization and
the spread of literacy, has occurred in the context of the modernization of
Muslim states and the incorporation of the masses into the political society.
The rise of secular, modernizing states, national integration and political
mobilization have politically conditioned this religious revival. The import-
ance of this new political conditioning has been generally recognized, and
the observers who highlight the sharp political edge of the current Islamic
revival have referred to it as ‘political Islam’. Political Islam, however, is not
the essential or inevitable result of the clash of Islamic and Western civiliz-
ation. In fact, it appears nearly two centuries after modern France burst into
the heart of the Ottoman empire with Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt in
1798. We must therefore examine the Western political impact in the inter-
vening centuries before jumping to any conclusions. Political modernization
as state-building may have clashed with the political tradition of Middle
Eastern patrimonial monarchy, but not with Islam as a religion. Legal reforms,
on the other hand, created some tension between Islam and civil rights,
which will be the focus of my brief survey.

II. POLITICAL MODERNIZATION, CIVIL RIGHTS AND ISLAM

The international spread to the Middle East in the latter part of the 19th
century of the Western idea of the rule of law and models of the constitutional
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 14

14 Thesis Eleven (Number 76 2004)

state did not produce a clash between Islam and constitutionalism. Unlike
the militant secularists and Islamists of the age of ideology, those who made
the Ottoman Fundamental Law of 1876, the Iranian Fundamental Laws of
1906 and 1907 and the Egyptian constitution of 1923 recognized the funda-
mental dualism of temporal and religious law in the system of public law
under which they were living. For them, the transfer of the legislative power
– the right to make public laws – from the monarch to the people was con-
ceptually non-problematic, and did not involve Islam. It would not occur to
the Ottoman advocates of a constitution or Fundamental Law (kanun-e esasi),
in the 19th century, and their Iranian followers at the beginning of the 20th,
to identify legislative power as other than that of making public law – kanun.
This is evident in the terminology of the Ottoman and Iranian Fundamental
Laws.2 Of the contemporary Middle Eastern and North African constitutions,
the Moroccan constitution of 1992 remains true to the traditional dualism of
the Muslim monarchies in emphasizing the king’s role as the guarantor of
both the temporal and the religious legal orders (Mayer, 1993b). Furthermore,
shari’a (Islamic law) was drawn upon judiciously in the construction of the
modern legal codes in Iran under `Ali Akbar Davar, from 1927 to 1933, and
in Egypt under `Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri, especially in the Civil Code of
1948. The explanation is simple. For that generation, Islam was not an
abstract ideology but an institutionally embedded order.
It took the arrogance of Ataturk’s militant secularists to use the term
tesri`iyye for the shari`a – a word never used in the Ottoman constitution –
for the legislative power, thereby confusing by appropriation the people’s
newly acquired right to make public laws with the divine inspiration of the
shari`a. The appropriation, however, was short-sighted, and made an Islamist
vengeance possible in the long run. In historical truth, what in principle was
being transferred to the people – at least in 1876 in the Ottoman empire and
1906–7 in Iran – was not any divine prerogative but the monarch’s right to
make public laws. This is not to say that there was no conflict between
modern state laws and the shari`a. You cannot have legal pluralism, or
dualism, without conflict among laws and heterogeneous legal principles.
The legal history of medieval Islam is replete with examples of conflict
between royal public law and the shari`a. The same is true of modern con-
stitutionalism in the Middle East. Clashes between the jurisdiction of the state
laws and the shari`a surfaced in a basic form in the constitutional debates
in Iran in 1907–8, and since then in Pakistan and elsewhere. The points of
incompatibility have been meticulously catalogued by An-Na’im (1990: ch.
4). But the civil rights to security of life and property – the first to be intro-
duced in the Muslim world, though at variance with the political culture of
the patrimonial and imperial systems of the Middle East – were not contra-
dictory to Islamic law. Furthermore, the members of the political elite were
the greatest beneficiaries of the proclamations of civil rights in the second
half of the 19th century: their lives became secure after dismissal, and their
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 15

Arjomand: Islam, Political Change and Globalization 15

property was no longer confiscated. On the other hand, equal rights for the
recognized, ‘protected’ religious minorities (dhimmis) and the right to
religious liberty constituted a major cause of conflict between constitutional
law and the shari`a.
The history of modern constitutionalism in the Middle East opens with
the granting of equal rights to all Ottoman subjects irrespective of their
religion by the imperial decrees of 1839 and 1856. Prior to that period, the
status of Muslim and non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Sultan was
unequal. Both groups, however, were beneficiaries of the Ottoman legal
pluralism. Depending on the composition of the population, the Jews, the
Christians and the four official Sunni Muslim schools of law had their courts,
and the subjects were free to choose the court they wished to appeal to. It
was not, for instance, unusual for Christian subjects to resort to the Muslim
courts if they so wished (Jennings, 1978). Furthermore, both Muslim and non-
Muslim subjects had the right to complain to the Sultan in cases of mis-
carriage of justice and violation of the public law by the administrators or the
judges (Gerber, 1994: 154–73). It is an unfortunate fact, however, that equal
rights were only granted to non-Muslim subjects under pressure from the
European powers, which acted as their protectors. Ahmed Çevdet Pasha, who
was to produce the first modern shari`a-based Ottoman code of 1858,
recorded the popular reaction to the Sultan’s decree of 1856 as follows:

Many Muslims started complaining, saying: ‘Today, we lost our sacred rights as
a religious community, [rights] which had been won by the blood of our fathers
and forefathers . . . Today is a day of mourning and despair for the Muslims.’
For the minority subjects [instead], this was a day of joy. (Tezakire, cited in
Gocek, 1993: 517)

Half a century later, however, the demand for the equality of the rights
of all citizens was written into the constitutional law of the Middle East as a
result of popular pressure during the constitutional revolutions of 1906 in
Iran and 1908 in the Ottoman empire. The Shi`ite religious leaders who had
supported the constitutionalists in Iran obtained significant concessions
during the constitutional debates of 1907. On this important issue, however,
the conflict between the shari`a and the new constitutional law was resolved
in favor of the latter. The religious leaders vehemently opposed the principle
of equality of all citizens before the law (Article 8 of the Supplementary
Fundamental Law of 1907), which they correctly perceived as contradictory
to the provisions of the shari`a. But in the end, the Shi`ite religious leaders
had to give in. The legal implications of Article 8 were far-reaching
(Arjomand, 1993: 77–82). By declaring all citizens equal before the law, it
established public law, the state law, as the general law of the land, and
overrode the typical legal particularism of the shari`a concerning the legally
autonomous Muslim and non-Muslim religious minorities.
The principle of equality before the law is generally accorded explicit
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 16

16 Thesis Eleven (Number 76 2004)

recognition in other Middle Eastern constitutions, including those that grant

Islam a special place. The Pakistani constitutions of 1956 and 1962 recog-
nized the principle of equality before the law, but without eliminating legal
pluralism completely. The traditional Islamic legal pluralism received some
acknowledgement by the fact that the Muslim citizens could follow the
personal law of the shari`a according to any legal school (madhhab) they
belonged to. The constitution of 1973 finally ended this element of pluralism
in personal law for the Muslim citizens of Pakistan de jure. In the Islamic
Republic of Iran, the provision of the equality of all citizens before the law
is carried over from Article 8 of the old constitution into Article 20 of the new
constitution, but is qualified ‘with due observance of the Islamic standards’.
The fact that ‘the Islamic standards’ are not made explicit is significant. There
is no reference to the provisions of the shari`a regarding the inferior status
of the ‘protected minorities’ any more than to its provisions regarding slavery.
The principle of the equality of citizens irrespective of religion in the public
law of the Middle East can thus be said to have withstood the impact of
Islamic fundamentalism, even in the theocratic constitution of Iran.3 As we
shall see presently, it is otherwise with the rights of unrecognized religious
minorities, and with the right to religious freedom, including apostasy.

III. THE IDEOLOGICAL SUBVERSION OF THE RULE OF LAW

Let us move from the minor tension between Islam and constitutional-
ism to the major clash between the West and ‘political Islam’, whose roots
are in the age of ideology that precedes the global era. The Cold War phase
of the international system of nation-states was the period of the advent of
ideology in the Middle East. The age of ideology did not reject constitution-
alism categorically but compromised with it. In fact, it had its own consti-
tutional model in the Soviet constitution of 1918. The model, which I have
called the ‘ideological constitution’, is designed not for the limitation of
government but for the transformation of the social order according to a
revolutionary ideology. Limited government and civil liberties have to give
way, as the constitution itself is now an instrument of social transformation
(Arjomand, 1992: 46). The Algerian constitution of 1961 (and the subsequent
National Charters down to 1988), the Egyptian constitution of 1971, the con-
stitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and the constitution of the
Islamic Republic of Iran are the most important examples of Middle Eastern
ideological constitutions.
The subversion of constitutionalism by ideology in the Muslim world
had its secularist beginnings in Turkey in the 1930s, and its Islamic turn with
the creation of the state of Pakistan in 1947. The Ottoman and Iranian con-
stitutionalists had no conceptual difficulty in recognizing that what was
being transferred to the people was not any divine prerogative but the
monarch’s right to make public laws. The same cannot be said about the
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 17

Arjomand: Islam, Political Change and Globalization 17

constitution-makers of Pakistan a century after the demise of the Mughal

empire. Agitating outside the Constituent Assembly, the fundamentalists, led
by `Abu’l-a`la’ Mawdudi, called for the creation of an ‘ideological state’, and
turned not to the constitutional history of the Mughal empire, or any other
Muslim state, but rather to the juxtaposition of Western constitutional blue-
prints to the scriptural sources of Islam. The result was the declaration of
God’s sovereignty in the 1956 constitution of the Islamic Republic of
Pakistan, which the late Fazlur Rahman (1970: 277) characterized as a ‘comic’
transfer of political sovereignty to God, the famous Objectives Resolution of
1949. The declaration of God’s sovereignty was not devoid of consequences.
The Pakistani constitution-makers had intellectually capitulated to Mawdudi
by paying lip-service to his abstraction of Islam from historical reality. As
Malik (1996) shows convincingly, most of Zia ul-Haq’s Islamicizing legis-
lation had been contemplated by earlier governments and was thus a con-
tinuation of ongoing trends, a ‘much-delayed outcome of the country’s
foundation in 1947’ (Taylor, 1983: 181), and appropriately culminated in the
insertion, by Presidential Order No. 14 in 1985, of the resolution on God’s
sovereignty into the justiciable Article 2-A of the constitution. The early
characterization of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan as an ‘ideological state’,
usually dismissed as pure rhetoric, can in hindsight be seen as correspond-
ing to an evolving historical reality all along. Islam was trapped by the newly
arrived mystique of ideology as no world religion had been.
In the Arab world, ideology made its first appearance in nationalist and
socialist forms, and in conjunction with the modern political myth of revol-
ution. The constitution written for the Ba`th party long before it gained power
illustrates the contradiction between constitutionalism and ideology com-
bined within a single syncretic document. After affirming parliamentary
government, freedom and the independence of the judiciary, the Ba`th is
described as a revolutionary party. Its main objective, to be achieved through
revolutionary struggle, was the creation of a one-party mobilizational regime
(Kedourie, 1992: ch. 6). It was in Egypt, however, that the rule of law first
succumbed to ideology, even though it had been institutionalized further than
in the rest of the Middle East in the 1940s. The Egyptian Council of State
(Majlis al-Dawla), established in 1946 on the model of the French Conseil
d’État, soon set itself apart from its French model by its historic decision of
1948 which established the principle of judicial review not only for the
Council but also for the whole Egyptian judiciary (Hill, 1993: 218–29). The
Majlis al-Dawla supported the Free Officers in 1952, and its president, `Abd
a-Razzaq al-Sanhuri, drafted a constitution in 1954. But Nasser found it objec-
tionable and discarded it ‘because the gains of the revolution could not be
preserved under it’ (Brown 1997: 76). The age of ideology had begun its
impact on the Egyptian state, and with it came the Courts of Treason, the
Revolutionary Courts, and finally the People’s Courts whose aim, before all
else, was to ‘secure the Revolution’.
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 18

18 Thesis Eleven (Number 76 2004)

The coming of the age of ideology thus constituted a severe setback for the
recently constitutionalized civil and political rights in Muslim countries. The
growth of Islamic fundamentalism, which has been partially fostered by
globalization, began in the latter part of this period and was wedded to ideology
to produce ‘political Islam.’ The spread of fundamentalism and Islamic political
ideologies has caused a sharp deterioration in the traditional pattern of intol-
erance. (Brown, 1997: 76–7)

During the first decade of Ottoman reforms (tanzimat), the issue of the
proselytization of Muslims into a new faith surfaced in Iran and Ottoman Iraq
with the spread of the Babi millenarian movement among the Shi’a. A Babi
missionary was tried and imprisoned in the Ottoman empire, and the leader
of the movement, the Bab, was tried and eventually executed in Iran. I have
concluded, from an analysis of the cases of prosecution of the Babis for
apostasy in the Ottoman empire and Iran at the time of the onset of legal
modernization in the Middle East, that the authoritative interpretation of the
Islamic law of apostasy remained closely tied to the disturbance of the
political order (Arjomand, 1996). Be that as it may, the shari`a’s law of
apostasy did not find its way into the constitutional law of the Middle East
in the first half of the 20th century. It remained silent on the heretical off-
shoots of Islam.
It was in the midst of agitation for an Islamic constitution in Pakistan
and the Punjab riots of 1953 that we meet the demand for the exclusion of
the Ahmadis from the Islamic community and from public office, including
the Foreign Ministry, which was held by an Ahmadi, Zafarullah Khan. It was
in 1974, however, and under the socialist government of Zulfikar `Ali Bhutto,
that the impact of Islamic fundamentalism was translated into a constitutional
amendment defining the Ahmadis as non-Muslims. This opened the way for
the persecution of the Ahmadis, which was greatly intensified under Zia ul-
Haq with a presidential ordinance in 1984 and a series of ‘blasphemy laws’.
By the early 1990s, over 100 Ahmadis had been arrested under these laws,
and some 2000 cases brought against them for ‘outraging the feelings of the
Muslims’ by praying, making the call to prayer (adhan) or simply pretend-
ing to be Muslims. It should be noted that cases of blasphemy have been
brought against Muslims and Christians, as well as Ahmadis; death sentences
have been passed, and some of the accused have been murdered with
impunity (Arjomand, 1996: 340–2).
In Iran, the members of the Baha’i faith – the successor movement to
the 19th-century Babi sect, which underwent considerable transformation and
spread beyond Iran as a universalist religion – have been treated as apos-
tates. During the decade after the Islamic revolution, some 200 Baha’is were
executed with or without trial, and tremendous pressure has been put on the
Baha’is to reconvert to Shi`ite Islam under ordinary administrative law. In
Saudi Arabia, where Islam is taken to mean the regime’s Wahhabi faith and
the Basic Law of 1992 declares the shari`a fully in force, the Shi`ite minority
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 19

Arjomand: Islam, Political Change and Globalization 19

has been persecuted as heretics, and in September 1992 a young Shi`ite was
beheaded for apostasy and blasphemy (Mayer, 1994: 358).
On 18 January 1985, the date subsequently chosen for the annual
celebration of Arab Human Rights by the Middle Eastern rights organizations,
the Islamic reformist Mahmud Mohammad Taha was hanged for apostasy by
the order of the Sudanese President Numeiri, and on 22 March 1991, the
Sudanese government enacted Dr Hassan al-Turabi’s new Islamic penal code,
based on the shari`a, that included the death penalty for apostasy for ‘any
Muslim who advocates the rejection of the Islamic beliefs or announces his
own rejection of Islam by word or act’ (Mayer, 1993a: 141). The most cele-
brated case of apostasy generated by the impact of Islamic fundamentalism
is the Rushdie affair. We have already mention Khomeini’s famous 1989 fatwa
condemning Rushdie to death for apostasy. The crudely political quality of
this ruling stands in sharp contrast to the legal subtlety and judicious mod-
eration of the ruling against the Babi missionary accused of apostasy in the
mid-19th century. The whole matter was treated as a political rather than legal
affair. In November 1992, the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic
Guidance banned the works of two of the signatories of a letter defending
Rushdie’s right to freedom of expression; and in February 1993, in a move
that is clearly contrary to the separation of the legislative and judiciary powers
in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Article 57), two-thirds of
the Majles deputies endorsed the death sentence against Rushdie (Arjomand,
1996: 343–4).
The apostasy cases in Egypt are significant for demonstrating the capa-
bility of fundamentalism, independently of ideology, to cause a civilizational
clash around religious freedom (i.e. apostasy). Despite their toeing the line
of the Supreme Constitutional Court as the body entitled to the ultimate
interpretation both of state law and the shari`a, the Egyptian courts have, in
accordance with the unreconstructed interpretation of the shari`a, annulled
the rights of apostates under the international human rights instruments to
change status, marry, inherit or have heirs, and have forcefully annulled their
marriages, exposing them to the atavistic shari`a penalty for adultery
(Hamad, 1999).

IV. SLOW RECOVERY OF THE RULE OF LAW FROM IDEOLOGY

How is the legacy of the ideological era affected by the post-1989 wave
of globalization? The determination of a possible historical shift, and of a
return of constitutionalism and civil rights in the Middle East, hinges on a
more general question: Is it possible to have the rule of law despite ideo-
logical constitutions? The answer to this key question is yes. An important
feature of ideological constitution-making can help us understand why this
is so. Ideological constitutions came late in the history of constitutionalism.
The late-comers to the process had at their disposal continuous accretions
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 20

20 Thesis Eleven (Number 76 2004)

to the international repertoire of legal and political culture that could be

selectively appropriated. In fact, syncretism becomes irresistible. As syncretic
documents, ideological constitutions include an impressive array of rights.
This is the case with the Middle Eastern ideological constitutions as well.
The intention of the makers of these constitutions was to pay lip service to
universal values while nullifying these rights provisions by such typical
qualifications as ‘except by law’, or requiring their ‘conformity with the
socialist aspiration of the people’, or ‘conformity with Islam’. So long as the
subjugation of the judiciary to the monolithic state endures, such nullifica-
tion will be effective, and the rule of law will remain an empty rhetoric. If
and where, however, an independent judiciary exists, survives, or re-
emerges and is given the power of judicial review, these provisions and
other deliberately vague and ambiguous clauses of ideological constitutions
can acquire new life. Any individual or party with access to the appropriate
courts can initiate the process of reinterpretation and creation of law. The
rule of law can then subvert ideology just as ideology had subverted the rule
of law.
The impact of ideology on the Egyptian legal system was considerable.
Although a parallel system of revolutionary courts came into being in the
1950s and 1960s, it was not until the end of Nasser’s rule that the major
onslaught on the regular judiciary was launched with a series of presidential
decrees in 1969. Though severely debilitated, the Egyptian judiciary survived
the onslaught, called ‘the massacre of the judiciary’ because a large number
of judges were forcefully retired. It regained its autonomy in the course of
political liberalization under Mubarak, especially with the reinstitution of the
Supreme Judiciary Council in 1984. The Supreme Court, originally designed
as a political court for speeding up the task of socialist transformation, has
become the self-appointive Supreme Constitutional Court.
The Supreme Constitutional Court has become increasingly assertive. It
has taken the road of judiciary activism by declaring the electoral laws of 1987
and 1990 unconstitutional, and by protecting property rights, even going so far
as to annul some of the land reform redistributions of 1952 (Hill, 1997). Further-
more, it has insinuated the texts of the international human rights instruments
into the Egyptian civil law (Brown, 1997: 120). This interpretation of domestic
laws in the light of international law on human rights is an interesting aspect
of globalization, and may be followed by other countries. Finally, despite the
Constitutional Amendment of 1980, which makes the principles of the shari`a
the source of Egyptian law, the high courts have in fact consistently maintained
the view that the source of law is the state (Brown, 1997: 125–6). The Supreme
Constitutional Court has claimed the exclusive right to interpret the principles
of the shari`a without following the rules of Islamic jurisprudence.
The latest triumph of ideology in the Middle East came with the
Islamic revolution of 1979 in Iran. There, the subversion of ideology – this
time an Islamic theocratic ideology – by the rule of law is just beginning.
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 21

Arjomand: Islam, Political Change and Globalization 21

It is interesting to note, however, that with the take-over of the modern-

ized state and its legal framework by the Islamic militants and the declar-
ation of the supremacy of the shari`a, the old dualism of public and sacred
law reappeared immediately. This dualism enabled the clerical jurists of the
Council of Guardians to defend property rights, which were fully consistent
with the shari`a, against the later encroachments of parliamentary legis-
lation since the early 1980s. But it also introduced fundamental contradic-
tions in the Iranian constitutional law. Furthermore, proclamations
notwithstanding, the Islamic law of unilateral divorce was not restored. A
court order was required for divorce, and women began to play an increas-
ing role in the family courts as assistant judges. In 1998 the first women
judges were appointed, in clear contradiction to the shari`a.
The more general result of this new legal dualism was a prolonged con-
stitutional crisis that was partly resolved by Khomeini’s assertion of the
superiority of state law over the shari`a in 1988 (Arjomand, 1993). This prin-
ciple was immediately institutionalized by the creation of a Council for the
Assessment of the Interest (maslahat) of the Islamic Regime, which was duly
recognized as an organ of the state in the constitutional amendments of 1989.
Various items of legislation previously vetoed by the Council of Guardians
for being contrary to the shari`a became law, and the Assessment Council
showed little hesitation to legislate beyond disputes bills. The result has in
general been the strengthening of the authority of the state, but at least
in one remarkable case it was a victory for women’s rights. By a law enacted
in November 1992, the Assessment Council instituted alimony as compensa-
tion for domestic labor during marriage. This radical departure from Shi`ite
law was justified by the argument that domestic labor was distinct from repro-
ductive duties required by the shari`a.
Meanwhile, the Islamic reform movement I mentioned earlier was
gathering momentum, and before long ideology emerged as one of its main
targets. In 1992 the leading reformist intellectual, `Abdolkarim Sorush, made
a radical break with the revolutionary characterization of Islam as an
ideology, arguing that Islam as a world religion is ‘richer than (farbahtar)
ideology’ because it allows for a variety of different interpretations. He also
deplored the ideologization of knowledge and modern political ideas such
as human rights, pointing out that ‘Islamic rights’ make no more sense than
‘Islamic water’ (Arjomand, 2002).
The reform movement became a force in Iranian constitutional politics
with Khatami’s unexpected election in 1997, and reopened the question of
the fundamental principles of order in the Islamic Republic for the first time
since 1979. The new president’s platform of civil society and ‘the rule of law’
(hokumat-e qanun) evoked an implicit contrast with ‘hokumat-e eslami ’
(Islamic government or theocracy), the slogan of the revolution. Khatami’s
new political discourse was spread by a reformist press which was allowed
to appear and flourished until the serious clamp-down by the Leader and
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 22

22 Thesis Eleven (Number 76 2004)

clerical authority three years later. Two key neologisms came from the
reformist hermeneutics: ‘pluralism’ and ‘reading’ (qera’at) [of Islam].
The reformists won resounding victories in three national elections in
three successive years – presidential elections in 1997, the municipal and
local councils in 1999 and the Majles (Iranian parliament) elections in 2000
– with huge margins. But these, especially the last – the capture of the Majles
– surprisingly turned into a defeat. On 6 August 2000, the Leader (supreme
religious jurist) told the Majles to stop its deliberations on the new press law,
and clerical judges were emboldened to close down the new (and only)
reformist paper, Bahar, and to arrest more journalists. Humiliation of the
reforms in the Majles was followed by the Leader’s continuous assault
through the clerically controlled judiciary, using, however, a group of former
Ministry of Intelligence investigators who had been appointed judges. These
judges now began harassing the Majles deputies, as they had done with jour-
nalists, by summoning them to courts for expressing their critical opinions in
parliament. The closure of the press continued beyond the dailies. Yet
another round of closure of magazines and monthlies came in March 2001,
on the eve of the Persian new year (Arjomand, 2001).
The president and the reformers in the Majles have not given up com-
pletely. In January 1999 Khatami succeeded in putting an end to political
murders by insisting on the arrest and trial of a number of officials in the
Ministry of Intelligence. In December 1997 Khatami had set up a Commission
for the Implementation of the Constitution (made his responsibility in Article
113 of the Constitution). The vast majority of complaints heard by the Com-
mission since then have concerned the confiscation of property and violation
of other rights of the members of religious minorities. In April 1998 the
Ministry of the Interior had announced it was preparing legislation to deprive
the Council of Guardians of this supervisory power, which has no basis in
the Constitution. Four years later, the bill was passed, together with another
to increase the power of the President as the guardian of the Constitution
according to its Article 113. The Council of Guardians rejected both.
Whatever the outcome of the current struggle between the reformists
and the clerical ruling elite, the serious undermining of the legitimacy of theo-
cratic government by this new hermeneutic pluralism cannot be doubted.
This, at any rate, is the assessment of a disgruntled ayatollah who recently
told his congregation:
This gentleman [President Khatami] says there are different readings [the key
subversive term in the reformist hermeneutics] of the foundations of Islam and
religious beliefs. . . . The source of this danger is the slogan of civil society on
whose side different readings of the foundations of religion take place. (cited
in Arjomand, 2002: 727)

Despite its political defeat, the reform movement can thus show one
achievement: it has established that there is more than one reading of Islam,
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 23

Arjomand: Islam, Political Change and Globalization 23

and has thereby shaken the authority of the supreme jurist and the clerical
jurists of the Council of Guardians, as guardians of the official ideology, to
interpret Islam and to nullify human rights according to ‘Islamic standards’.

V. GLOBALIZATION AND DEFENSIVE COUNTER-

UNIVERSALISM
An interesting feature of globalization is the unfolding of anti-global
sentiments in particularistic, variety-producing movements, which seek local
legitimacy but, nevertheless, have a global frame of self-reference (Robert-
son and Khondker, 1998: 28–31). The flexibility of signing international con-
ventions with reservations has allowed a large number of Muslim states to
confirm their membership in the international communities by signing the
UN human rights instruments, for instance the 1989 UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, but with significant reservations which affirm the priority
of the shari`a rules (Paradelle, 1999).
More typically, however, global integration induces many Muslims to
emphasize their unique identity within the frame of reference of their own
culture, which can be said to be at once universal and local or sub-global
(Hunwick, 1996: 231). There can be no doubt that global integration has
made many Muslims seek to appropriate universalist institutions by what
might be called Islamic cloning. We thus hear more and more about ‘Islamic
science’, ‘Islamic human rights’, an ‘Islamic international system’ and a variety
of organizations modeled after the United Nations and its offshoots, most
notably the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which was founded in
1969 and has 57 member countries, with institutions that clone the World
Bank, UNESCO and the International Red Cross. To confuse it with funda-
mentalism is a grave mistake. It is a reactive tendency, however, and I would
call it defensive counter-universalism. The relation of this defensive counter-
universalism to the old universalism of Islam as a world religion is parallel
to the defensive counter-universalism of Samuel Huntington’s (1996) ‘the
West versus the rest’ to the old universalism of the Enlightenment.
The old pattern of dynamics of Islam as a universalist religion, as was
pointed out, included fundamentalist trends, alongside many others. The
fundamentalist tendency in Islam has been reinforced by some of the con-
temporary processes of social change, including globalization, and has
acquired a new and sharply political edge under the impact of political
modernization. The political Islam can also be considered a variety of funda-
mentalism (Arjomand, 1995). It would be misleading, however, to speak
simply of a shift from universalism to fundamentalism. For one thing, mis-
sionary traditional Islam also flourishes, and has adopted modern technology
to its growth. This is especially evident in the massive proselytizing move-
ments in South Asia. More importantly, the main impact of globalization on
the Islamic world has not been the growth of fundamentalism but what I am
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 24

24 Thesis Eleven (Number 76 2004)

calling defensive counter-universalism. Fundamentalism has been character-

ized as selectively modern and selectively traditional (Marty and Appleby,
1995); it is therefore assimilative despite its intent. The assimilative character
of defensive counter-universalism is more pronounced. It has already resulted
in the assimilation of universal organizational forms, and albeit restrictively,
of universal ideas such as human rights and rights of women. It is difficult
to escape the conclusion that, despite its intent, defensive counter-universal-
ism is inevitably a step toward the modernization of the Islamic tradition.
Furthermore, the direct impact of globalization on the Muslim world is
contrary to its indirect effects through fundamentalism, such as the above-
mentioned violations of human rights. The increasing integration of the
Middle Eastern states into the international system exposes them to strong
contrary trends in international law. This exposure has introduced a new
element of legal pluralism and generated ambivalent reactions throughout
the Middle East. Furthermore, the impact of the human rights revolution on
the legal culture of Middle Eastern societies has not been inconsiderable.
Whereas in the first half of the 20th century the international legal
culture witnessed the amplification of ‘civil’ and ‘political’ by ‘social’ rights,
its second half was marked by the ongoing ‘human rights revolution’. This
revolution has a strong international – indeed transcendental – dimension.
Most Middle Eastern countries have acceded to international human rights
instruments, and all have paid at least lip service to human rights. More
significantly, the post-1989 wave of new constitutionalism instantly spread
from Europe to North Africa. A distinctive feature of the new constitutional-
ism is the institution of constitutional courts to safeguard the transition to
democracy and protect human rights (Arjomand, 2003b). Algeria in 1989,
Tunisia in 1990 (anticipated by a presidential decree in 1987), Mauritania in
1991 and Morocco in 1992 set up constitutional courts on the French model
and charged them with the protection of human rights. The Preamble to the
new Constitution of Morocco (1992) significantly reaffirms the ‘attachment to
human rights as they are universally recognized’, with implicit reference to
the new Conseil Constitutionnel as their guardian (Bendourou, 1997: 236).
Even the Saudi Basic Law pays lip service to human rights by declaring their
protection in accordance with the shari`a a function of the state (Article 26).
An increasing number of Muslim intellectuals are defending the right to
the freedom of expression by insisting that religious liberty and freedom of
conscience are clearly deducible from the text of the Koran. A number of
Koranic verses strongly imply a form of ‘natural religion’ among mankind,
which entails religious liberty, and make explicit freedom of conscience and
religion, most notably, ‘there is no compulsion in religion’ (Koran, 2.256). In
Iran, `Abdol-Karim Sorush, the erstwhile chairman of the Council for Islamic
Cultural Revolution, has gone as far as putting the world religions on an equal
footing in a recent title, The Straight Paths (saratha-ye mostaqim), a sacri-
legious pluralization of a fundamental Koranic concept (Arjomand, 1996).
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 25

Arjomand: Islam, Political Change and Globalization 25

Cultural change and the radical break with ideology, however, does not
automatically translate into institutional gains. A plausible sociological expla-
nation for the continued violation of civil and political rights in Egypt and
Tunisia, which is applicable to the Muslim world generally, is that the social
forces that have historically defended the extension of rights elsewhere are
too weak in comparison with the centralized states which dominate civil
society through corporatist invasion (Dalacoura, 1998). In fact, the one area
of rights where we find significant (albeit insufficient) gains has a growing
social force behind it. Among human rights, women’s rights have the
strongest social backing, resulting from structural and occupational changes
in contemporary Middle Eastern societies. Women’s rights are represented by
official organs of the states, and by a growing number of NGOs which are
increasingly linked with international NGOs and the United Nations agencies.
According to some reports, the women’s NGOs stole the show from the state
delegates at the International Conference on Population and Development in
Cairo (1994), and delegates from the Muslim countries were conspicuous
in the Fourth World Conference on the Status of Women in Beijing (1995).
In Iran, women constituted the largest group of Khatami’s supporters, and
the reformists in the Majles include a few prominent women. The women’s
movement has made significant gains since 1997, and is acting as a channel
for the slow but continuous influence of international conventions on
women’s rights on Iranian administrative and civil law.
On the other hand, the transnational Islamic resurgence has caused the
rejection of the assertion of the universality of human rights, and has gener-
ated an official ‘Islamic alternative’. This Islamic alternative is embodied in
the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. As is to be expected
in an imitative document, much of the legal terminology of the international
human rights conventions is swallowed while quite a number of rights are
in substance nullified. The Cairo Declaration offers no guarantee of religious
freedom. It prohibits any form of compulsion or exploitation of poverty and
ignorance to convert anyone to atheism or a religion other than Islam (Article
10). Article 22 of the Declaration bars ‘the exploitation or misuse of infor-
mation in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets,
undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt, or harm society
or weaken its faith’ (Mayer, 1994: 336). It is interesting to note that, in flat
contradiction to the historical experience and the public law of virtually all
the signatory countries, Article 19 of the Cairo Declaration provides that
‘There shall be no crime or punishment except as provided for in the
Shari’ah’. Article 25 further declares the shari`a the only source for expla-
nation and clarification of the articles of the Declaration (Mayer, 1994:
327–50). While endorsing the Cairo Declaration, the Islamic Conference of
Foreign Ministers in April 1993 also confirmed, ‘the existence of different con-
stitutional and legal systems among [the] Member States and various inter-
national or regional human rights instruments to which they are parties’
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 26

26 Thesis Eleven (Number 76 2004)

(Mayer, 1994: 350).4 This acknowledgment leaves open the kind of insinua-
tion of international law on human rights into national laws of the kind under-
taken by the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt.
Let me conclude this discussion of human rights from the perspective
of legal pluralism. To repeat a point made earlier, one cannot have legal
pluralism without conflict between the laws. Membership in the international
community makes the legal systems of the contemporary Middle East per-
meable to principles of international law, and introduces an element of legal
pluralism. A process of osmosis is set in motion, not through the implemen-
tation of international law – we all know how woefully inadequate the
mechanisms for such implementation are – but rather through the eventual
absorption of international legal phraseology of human rights into the con-
stitutional laws of the Middle Eastern countries. Owing to this osmosis, the
seeds for future change in human and women’s rights remain firmly
implanted in the actual and potential contradictions between the national and
international laws, and especially the right-oriented international legal
culture. It must be admitted, however, that the progress achieved so far has
been minimal by comparative standards, and the road ahead remains very
bumpy.

Saïd Amir Arjomand is Professor of Sociology at the State University of New

York at Stony Brook, and Editor of International Sociology, the journal of the Inter-
national Sociological Association. From 1996 to 2002 he was the President of the
Association for the Study of Persianate Societies. Address: Department of Sociology,
State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4356, USA. [email:
said.arjomand@stonybrook.edu]

Notes
1. The methodological problem with Keddie’s assertion of the near identity of the
economic and socio-political conditions in these peripheries of the Muslim
world with those of 7th-century Arabia notwithstanding, I find her analysis of
the generally conducive socio-economic conditions complementary to my
emphasis on the cultural factor of conscious imitation of the Prophetic model
by the leaders of latter-day revitalization movements.
2. The term used for ‘constitution’ in Arabic and Urdu is dastur, an old Persian
administrative term that gained currency in Arabic about the same time as the
Greek kanun.
3. The practice and extralegal persecutions are another matter.
4. This amounts to a very significant qualification of the categorical recognition of
the shari`a in the Cairo Declaration as most Middle Eastern countries are signa-
tories to several such international instruments. Iran, for instance, is among the
signatories to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 27

Arjomand: Islam, Political Change and Globalization 27

References
Arjomand, S. A. (1986) ‘Social Change and Movements of Revitalization in Contem-
porary Islam’, in James Beckford (ed.) New Religious Movements and Rapid
Social Change, pp. 87–112. London: Sage Publications.
Arjomand, S. A. (1992) ‘Constitutions and the Struggle for Political Order: A Study in
the Modernization of Political Traditions’, Archives européennes de sociolo-
gie/European Journal of Sociology 33(4): 39–82.
Arjomand, S. A. (1993) ‘Religion and Constitutionalism in Western History and Modern
Iran and Pakistan’, in S. A. Arjomand (ed.) The Political Dimensions of Religion.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Arjomand, S. A. (1995) ‘Unity and Diversity in Islamic Fundamentalism’, in M. Marty
and R. S. Appleby (eds) Fundamentalisms Comprehended, pp. 179–98. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Arjomand, S. A. (1996) ‘Religious Human Rights and the Principle of Legal Pluralism
in the Middle East’, in J. van der Vyver and J. Witte (eds) Religious Human
Rights in Global Perspective: Vol. 2, Legal Perspectives, pp. 331–47. Dordrecht:
M. Nijhoff.
Arjomand, S. A. (2001) ‘Democratization and the Constitutional Politics of Iran since
1997’, Polish Sociological Review 136(4): 349–63.
Arjomand, S. A. (2002) ‘The Reform Movement and the Debate on Modernity and
Tradition in Contemporary Iran’, International Journal of Middle East Studies
34: 719–31.
Arjomand, S. A. (2003a) ‘Thinking Sociologically about Islam’, in M. Juergensmeyer
(ed.) Global Religions: An Introduction, pp. 28–39. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Arjomand, S. A. (2003b) ‘Law, Political Reconstruction and Constitutional Politics’,
International Sociology 18(1): 9–34.
Barber, B. R. (1995) Jihad vs. McWorld. New York: Random House.
Bendourou, O. (1997) ‘Conseils constitutionnels et État de droit au Maghreb’, in A.
Mahiou (ed.) L’État de droit dans le monde arabe, pp. 227–44. Paris: CNRS
Éditions.
Brown, N. (1997) The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Gulf.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dalacoura, K. (1998) Islam, Liberalism and Human Rights. London: I. B. Tauris.
Eickelman, D. F. (1998) ‘Inside the Islamic Reformation’, Wilson Quarterly 22(1): 80–9.
Gellner, E. (1981) Muslim Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gellner, E. (1994) Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals. London: Hamish
Hamilton.
Gerber, H. (1994) State, Society, and Law in Islam. Ottoman Law in Comparative
Perspective. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Gocek, F. M. (1993) ‘Ethnic Segmentation, Western Education, and Political Outcomes:
Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Society’, Poetics Today 14(3).
Hamad, A. S. (1999) ‘Legal Pluralism and Legitimation of Human Rights Abuses’, in
B. Dupret, M. Berger and L. al-Zwain (eds) Legal Pluralism in the Arab World,
pp. 219–28. The Hague: Kluwer.
Hill, E. (1993) ‘Majlis al-Dawla: The Administrative Courts of Egypt and Administra-
tive Law’, in Ch. Mallat (ed.) Islam and Public Law. London: Graham & Trotman.
Hill, E. (1997) ‘Jurisprudence of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt’, presented
17U 02-040108 (ds) 17/2/04 1:03 pm Page 28

28 Thesis Eleven (Number 76 2004)

at the annual convention of the Middle East Studies Association, San Francisco,
22–24 November.
Huntington, S. P. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Making of World Order.
New York: Simon and Schuster.
Hunwick, J. (1996) ‘Sub-Saharan Africa and the Wider World of Islam: Historical and
Comparative Perspectives’, Journal of Religion in Africa 26(3): 231–57.
Jennings, R. C. (1978) ‘Kadi, Court and Procedure in Seventeenth-Century Kayseri’,
Studia Islamica 48.
Keddie, N. R. (1994) ‘Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993: Comparative Considerations and
Relations to Imperialism’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 36(3):
463–87.
Kedourie, E. (1992) Politics in the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Malik, J. (1996) Colonialization of Islam: Dissolution of Traditional Institutions in
Pakistan. New Delhi: Manohar.
Marty, M. and Appleby, R. S. (eds) (1995) Fundamentalisms Comprehended. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Mayer, A. E. (1993a) ‘The Fundamentalist Impact in Iran, Pakistan and the Sudan’, in
M. Marty and R. S. Appleby (eds) Fundamentalisms and the State. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Mayer, A. E. (1993b) ‘Moroccans – Citizens or Subjects? A People at a Crossroads’,
Journal of International Law and Politics 26(1).
Mayer, A. E. (1994) ‘Universal versus Islamic Human Rights: A Clash of Cultures or a
Clash of Constructs?’, Michigan Journal of International Law 15(2): 308–402.
An-Na`im, A. (1990) Toward an Islamic Reformation. New York: Syracuse University
Press.
Paradelle, M. (1999) ‘Legal Pluralism and Public International Law: An Analysis based
on the International Convention of the Rights of the Child’, in B. Dupret, M.
Berger and L. al-Zwaini (eds) Legal Pluralism in the Arab World. The Hague:
Kluwer.
Rahman, F. (1970) ‘Islam and the Constitutional Problem of Pakistan’, Studia Islamica
32.
Robertson, R. (1993) ‘Globalization and Sociological Theory’, in H. Martins (ed.)
Knowledge and Passion: Essays in Honour of John Rex. London: I. B. Tauris.
Robertson, R. and Khondker, H. H. (1998) ‘Discourses of Globalization: Preliminary
Considerations’, International Sociology 13(1): 25–40.
Rodinson, M. (1973) Islam and Capitalism. New York: Pantheon.
Taylor, D. (1983) ‘Politics of Islam and Islamization in Pakistan’, in James Piscatori
(ed.) Islam in the Political Process. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Therborn, G. (2000) ‘Globalizations: Dimensions, Historical Waves, Regional Effects,
Normative Governance’, International Sociology 15(2): 151–79.
Turner, B. (1974) Weber and Islam. London: Routledge.
Voll, J. O. (1982) Islam. Continuity and Change in the Modern World. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press.