11. Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism Episode and Discourse by Mansoor Moaddel

My objective in reading this book was to try to get a better understanding of the rise of fundamentalist Islam. As it turned out this book is more sociology than history and as a result I struggled to get through it, not because it was boring but because sociology is a discipline that has so much jargon that it is difficult to read a book like this which offers little in explanations of this jargon.

Nevertheless, as best as I can tell, the author's thesis is that the development of fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent was not the result of consistent long term economic, social or political changes in the Middle East, rather, the shift from the previous ideology in the Middle East to today's fundamentalist ideology was an episodic discourse that happened sporadically over a period of time.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the theories that the author is trying to refute to tell you whether he is right or wrong, what I can say is that he puts forward a fairly compelling analysis to support his thesis.

What I found most interesting about the book is that at some point in the modern era Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran all had fledgling liberal democratic regimes that, at least, held power for a short period of time. In Iran, for example, between 1905 and 1911 the country was run as a bona fide constitutional monarchy; in the 10 years prior to the Ba'ath party's take over in both Syria and Iraq both countries were also run as mostly secular democracies; and in the late 1800s the incumbent political party in Egypt was, what the author calls, a liberal modernist Islamic party which was a lot better than what came after it.

In all of these countries the last half century has seen a regression from fledgling liberal democracies to totalitarian Islamic states. The author ascribes a variety of reasons for these changes but it basically boils down to the following pattern: (1) the liberal democracies emerged in each of these countries; (2) the leaders of these democracies tried to devise secular governments; (3) the Islamic clergy, who in each case had a lot to lose financially, opposed any such change and mobilized diverse groups of people against the liberal democrats; and (4) the governments could not sustain the pressure from the clergy and collapsed.

In the case of Iran, the Shah replaced the liberal democracy twice - once in 1911 and a second time in 1963 - and was eventually overthrown by the clergy when he went too far in trying to create a secular state.

It was an interesting but tough book to get through.