History of Islamist Mobilizations (19th – 21st century), Edited by François Burgat & Matthieu Rey
With the French Institute of Jordan (IFJ), we are pleased to invite you to a book presentation
Tuesday, March 7th, at 6 P.M.
At the French Institute of Jordan (IFJ), Al -Weibdeh, Amman
Nowadays Political Islam seems more polarizing, worrying and questioning than ever before. It literally occupies an invasive place in French political and intellectual debate. After so many studies and debates, the book does not seek to define once again “the essence of Political Islam” or to refine the descriptive typology of its different expressions (Salafism, Wahhabism, Muslim Brotherhood, etc.) . It strives more to offer a global social and political history.
To offer a world tour of these mobilizations, from Algeria to Indonesia and from Nigeria to Iran, François Burgat and Matthieu Rey asked specialists from these geographical areas to broaden the scope of the analysis. Far from the clichés about “the birth of Political Islam in the 1970s”, the analysis goes back to the 19th century and shows how the process is more structural. This dive into the Islamist world revolves around five major historical moments, from the early beginning to contemporary recomposition, passing through the colonial shock and the age of revolutions. The book manages to correlate major socio-economic and political changes in the relation between the Western and the Muslim worlds with local responses to these upheavals.
To offer a world tour of these mobilizations, from Algeria to Indonesia and from Nigeria to Iran, François Burgat and Matthieu Rey asked specialists from these geographical areas to broaden the scope of the analysis. Far from the clichés about “the birth of Political Islam in the 1970s”, the analysis goes back to the 19th century and shows how the process is more structural. This dive into the Islamist world revolves around five major historical moments, from the early beginning to contemporary recomposition, passing through the colonial shock and the age of revolutions. The book manages to correlate major socio-economic and political changes in the relation between the Western and the Muslim worlds with local responses to these upheavals.
Dr. Matthieu Rey is the head of the department of contemporary studies at IFPO and a researcher at the French CNRS (National center for scientific research). He was an associate professor at Collège de France (Paris) and Wits History Workshop (Johannesburg). He holds a PhD in history from the EHESS (Paris). His research focuses on the political systems in Southern Africa and the Middle East, to understand policy and state-building processes from the 19th century onwards. He was a doctoral fellow at the Ifpo in Damascus between 2009 and 2013. He recently published a book on the parliaments in the Middle East (When Parliaments ruled in the Middle East? Iraq and Syria 1946 – 1963, AUC Press).
A political scientist and arabist, Dr. François Burgat is a former Senior Research Fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. He has lectured in over forty countries across the world for a wide range of Academic institutions or think tanks such as the World Economic Forum, NATO, European Union, etc. A permanent resident in the Middle East for over 22 years, he has taught and researched at the University of Constantine, Algeria (1973-1980), at the French CEDEJ in Cairo (1989-1993), then as the director of the French Centre for Archaeology and Social Sciences in Sana’a, Yemen (1997-2003), at the IREMAM (Institut de Recherches et d’Etudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman) in Aix-en-Provence (2003-2008) then as the director of the Institut Français du Proche Orient (Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Irak, 2008-2013) based in Damascus then Beyrouth. François Burgat is also a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
