Islam And The Middle East, Religious And Political Opposition,

With the rise since the seventies of the Islamic Resurgence, people's outlook of religion has undergone fundamental changes. Whatever they think about the Resurgence, they all accept the plain fact that Islam has given a full play of its inherent vitality in thought, society and politics. In the plane of world politics, the impact and influence of the so-called political Islam have been felt on many aspects by various political forces. A general view shared by scholars and experts of political science is that it will hardly be possible for one to read and interpret correctly hot issues in world politics in general and Middle East politics in particular today without a correct understanding of the worldwide Islamic Movement. This new outlook urges me to shift my interest in research from Middle East economies to Middle East politics, trying to combine area studies with Islamic religious studies. The present dissertation is a result of this shift in orientation, which is based on an investigation report, a Young Scholar Project sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and completed more than one year ago.Islam and Religious Political Oppositions in the Middle East are composed of two parts, dealing respectively with the history and present aspect of the subject matter. Part one "Religion and Politics in History" is devoted to a historical overview of the relationship between Islam and state power in an attempt to provide background of the subject discussed in the paper. With a space of four chapters, this part deals with different dimensions of the subject matter, namely the historical conditions under which the union of Islam and the state power was formulated; the formation, development and change of the four forms of political systems in Medieval Times; the traditional political theories expounded by the Islamic scholars (Ulema) at different periods; and a dialectical and historical analysis of the various trends of Islamic ideology. All these serve as the so-called pre-history of the Islamic Political Oppositions in the Middle East.Part two, which is entitled "Research of the Religious Political Oppositions", is composed of two parts: comprehensive account and case studies. The former tries to give a general coverage of the Islamic political oppositions, including its definition, its historical, ideological and social origins, its social bases and general stand as well as the attitudes, policies and measures taken by the states and governments concerned towards them. As religious political oppositions are varied from place to place, the general starting point for this part (one chapter) is to seek characteristics in common among different opposition forces in order to avoid partial generalization or biased views. Case studies is attempted to give a full coverage through samplings of the religious political oppositions of different countries, including their rise, development and change, their social bases, general stands and relations with their governments, etc. For choosing samplings, two standards are adopted by the author.One is representation; i.e. the choice made must be well represented in importance. And accordingly, we select Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Turkey as typical countries for case studies. The other standard is retrospection which means in practice is that though some of the religious political oppositions have assume power, such as those in Iran and in Afghanistan, we still choose them as samplings because the general process is not over. According to this standard, the Sudan is also a good case for studies. We omit it for the time being because the space of the paper does not allow us that long. I hope to make up for this absence as occasion arises.In the six cases as mentioned above, there are similarities and differences each other with different emphasis. Egypt and Algeria are two nations that followed nationalist or socialist policies of which the separation of religion and state was a natural result Attempted as they did to assimilate Islam into the legac...