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"This book employs comparative historical methods while comparing certain periods of Islamic history with each other as well with particular periods of Western European history. One method it uses is "process tracing," which traces the causes of change by dividing a historical process into smaller and analytically comparable periods. The book also uses the methodological tool of "path dependence" to examine how ideational and material conditions in particular historical periods, especially "critical junctures," shape subsequent conditions by creating a path dependence. For example, in order to examine currently low levels of literacy in Muslim societies, the book traces the historical origins of this problem to these societies' three-century-long delay in establishing printing presses. Muslim societies did not take advantage of the printing technology during and even after the critical juncture of the mid-fifteenth century, when first presses were established in Western Europe. This historical experience created a path dependent literacy gap between Muslim and Western European societies"--

Why do Muslim-majority countries exhibit high levels of authoritarianism and low levels of socio-economic development in comparison to world averages? Ahmet T. Kuru criticizes explanations which point to Islam as the cause of this disparity, because Muslims were philosophically and socio-economically more developed than Western Europeans between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Nor was Western colonialism the cause: Muslims had already suffered political and socio-economic problems when colonization began. Kuru argues that Muslims had influential thinkers and merchants in their early history, when religious orthodoxy and military rule were prevalent in Europe. However, in the eleventh century, an alliance between orthodox Islamic scholars (the ulema) and military states began to emerge. This alliance gradually hindered intellectual and economic creativity by marginalizing intellectual and bourgeois classes in the Muslim world. This important study links its historical explanation to contemporary politics by showing that, to this day, ulema-state alliance still prevents creativity and competition in Muslim countries.

"Why do secular states pursue different policies toward religion? This book provides a generalizable argument about the impact of ideological struggles on the public policy making process, as well as a state-religion regimes index of 197 countries. More specifically, it analyzes why American state policies are largely tolerant of religion, whereas French and Turkish policies generally prohibit its public visibility, as seen in their bans on Muslim headscarves. In the United States, the dominant ideology is "passive secularism," which requires the state to play a passive role, by allowing public visibility of religion. Dominant ideology in France and Turkey is "assertive secularism," which demands that the state play an assertive role in excluding religion from the public sphere. Passive and assertive secularism became dominant in these cases through certain historical processes, particularly the presence or absence of an ancien régime based on the marriage between monarchy and hegemonic religion during state-building periods."--Publisher's description

AbstractHistorically, religion and nationalism were opposing forces in many countries. Recently, however, they began to converge as part of rising populist movements globally. In the Muslim world, the partnership between Islamists and nationalists has become evident in several important countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Malaysia. This merging of Islamism and populist nationalism in the last decade signifies a third period in the Muslim world, following the era of secularist domination (1920s–1970s) and the era of Islamization (1970s–2010s). Some Islamic conservatives might regard the unification of religious and nationalist forces as beneficial to their conservative agenda. Nonetheless, this comes at the high cost of discrimination against Muslim minorities in several countries, such as India, Israel, the United States, and France. Beyond Muslim-majority countries and Muslim minorities, the global trend of advancing a religious-nationalist agenda threatens minority rights. This trend poses a major challenge to democracy, equal citizenship, and minority rights worldwide.

Why did Turkish policies toward Syria and Egypt in 2011–15 largely fail? At the individual level, the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan was plagued by populism in the sense that he uses foreign policy issues for the sake of domestic party politics without pursuing long-term international strategies. At the state level, Turkey's military and diplomatic capacity was not sufficient to shape the political transformations in Syria and Egypt. At the international level, Turkey could not effectively respond to the challenges of the Iranian-led and Saudi Arabian–led blocs. The former supported the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the latter backed the military coup in Egypt. Turkey needed the support of its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies against these two rival blocs. However, Erdogan's populist discourse and tendency toward Islamist authoritarianism further deteriorated Turkey's relations with its Western allies.