Collection
Islamist Ideological Developments on Citizenship and Civil Liberties Since the Islamic Revival
The objective of this special issue is to gain greater insight into (the development of) views on citizenship and civil liberties – such as the rights of religious minorities, women’s rights and freedom of expression – among non-violent Islamists since the Islamic revival in the 1960s. The past decades have shown that groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded Islamists in other organisations have thought about, revised and reinterpreted their traditional views on topics such as the state, the implementation of Islamic law, democracy and elections. So much so, even, that several scholars label some of this ideological discourse “post-Islamist”. These non-violent Islamists have not, however, done the same with regard to the topics of citizenship and civil liberties. Their ideal of an Islamic state, even in the heavily revised version promoted by Islamists since the early 2000s, remains difficult to square with full and equal citizenship for non-Muslims, for example. Similarly, they have been willing to make concessions with regard to women’s rights and freedom of religion by reinterpreting Islamic tradition, but this has not moved nearly as far as their revisionism with regard to the state and democracy. This special issue asks why this has not happened.
Editors
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Joas Wagemakers
Joas Wagemakers (j.wagemakers@uu.nl) is an associate professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies at Utrecht University. He specializes in contemporary Islam, particularly in Salafism and Islamism, on which he has published extensively. His books include A Quietist Jihadi: The Ideology and Influence of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Salafism in Jordan: Political Islam in a Quietist Community (Cambridge University Press, 2016), The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and The Muslim Brotherhood: Ideology, History, Descendants (Amsterdam University Press, 2022).
