The edited volume Religion and Politics: Middle Eastern Societies from the 20th to the 21st Century explores one of the most complex aspects of contemporary life in the Middle East, focusing on the ongoing struggle between religion, politics and power in a region where multiple actors, competing ambitions and shifting geopolitical dynamics converge. The Middle East is not a single arena of crisis, but a space of unequal yet interconnected trajectories. States and societies grappling with wars, occupations, displacement and institutional breakdown coexist with regional powers seeking to reshape the balance of power, as well as intermediary state actors called upon to manage the pressures of an unstable environment without being identified with the most extreme forms of collapse or conflict.
Drawing on historical, anthropological, political, religious-studies and geopolitical approaches, the contributions in this volume help build a more systematic interdisciplinary field of study focused on the Middle East, its religions, its social dynamics and its international implications.
Contents: Introduction - State, Islam, Islamists: Towards an Arab Caesaropapism? - The “Re-founding” of Saudi Arabia: Social Transformations, Ideological Reconfigurations and Geopolitical Challenges - Islam in Turkey: From Kemal to Erdoğan - “My heart beats in the East, yet I live at the edge of the West…”: An introductory text on the ethnic landscape of contemporary Israeli society - The socio-political phenomenon of sectarianism: The case of Lebanon - The Islamic Republic of Iran: How Islamic is it, really? - The Coptic Church and the Egyptian state in the 21st century: From informal partnership to a strategy of visibility - For a funeral: Religion and politics through the anthropology of Syria’s Druze - On the path of “Islamic resistance”: A comparison of Hezbollah and Hamas - From the “local” to the “national” and from the “religious” to the “political”: Understanding the Houthi (Ansarullah) movement in Yemen - Salafi jihadism from Ibn Taymiyyah to al-Qaeda and al-Julani - From the margins to the forefront: Religious Zionism in Israeli society and politics - The Martyrs Never Die: Murals, Posters and Photographs from the Streets of Iranian Cities - Yazidi identity: A historical, ethnological and geopolitical approach - The other Turkish Islam: Fethullah Gülen and the Hizmet (Service) Movement - Glossary - Index
