Alfred Stepan is Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia University and founder and director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion. He has written extensively on democratic transitions, military regimes, and the relationship between religion and democracy in countries throughout the world. His theory of the “twin tolerations,” which argues that healthy democracies require religious leaders to grant authority to elected officials, and that state authorities must not only guarantee freedom of private religious worship but allow democratic participation in civil and political society, has influenced political theorists, heads of state, and grassroots activists.
Posts Tagged ‘Islamic politics’
June 15th, 2012
“Twin tolerations” today: An interview with Alfred Stepan
posted by Joseph Blankholm
April 27th, 2012
Alawites, Alevis, and Assad
posted by Candice Scharfn a recent article in The New Republic, Soner Cagaptay discusses how Syria’s sectarian divisions could exacerbate current divisions in Turkey.
April 2nd, 2012
“The Rise of the Islamists”
posted by Candice ScharfThe award-winning documentary radio program, America Abroad, has recently released a new documentary entitled, “The Rise of the Islamists.”
August 2nd, 2011
A tale of two flotillas
posted by Howard Eissenstat
Given the close relationship, globally, between religious political action and religious charities, it should come as no surprise that there is a long tradition of cooperation between Islamist political parties and Islamic charitable organizations in Turkey. While this relationship has been the subject of considerable discussion in analyses of Turkish domestic politics, less noticed has been the savvy cooperation between the Turkish government and Turkish Islamic organizations in implementing the country’s increasingly assertive foreign policy under the ruling AKP, or Justice and Development Party. Two recent crises, the “Mavi Marmara” incident in 2010 and Turkey’s on-going aid mission to Libya, highlight the ways in which this cooperation has allowed Turkey to assert itself regionally and are suggestive of the sophistication of its efforts to become, in Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan’s words, “a regional power and a global player.”
November 9th, 2010
Religion and democracy
posted by Sam HanOver at Boston Review, Princeton political scientist Jan-Werner Müller has written a lengthy article considering the rise of Christian (Catholic) Democratic parties in Western Europe and the Christian socialism of Jacques Maritain that had gained political traction in the middle years of the last century. He considers whether this history, largely unrecognized in the United States, bares any lessons for the prospects of overtly religious political parties—like the AKP in Turkey—in liberal democracies.
August 5th, 2010
Islamic feminism
posted by Jake AlterIs secular feminism feasible in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim-majority nations of the world? Isobel Coleman, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that it cannot subsist on its own and that it must be allied with a form of Islamic feminism. In her most recent book, Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East, she argues that we are already witnessing the emergence of many progressive social movements within the Islamic world.
July 27th, 2010
Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism
posted by Jake AlterJohn Calvert, Professor of History at Creighton University and a specialist in political Islam, in hisforthcoming biography of Sayyid Qutb, “rescues Qutb from misrepresentation, tracing the evolution of his thought within the context of his time.” InSayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism(2010), he does not look to absolve Qutb of his virulent rhetoric but pushes the reader to understand Qutb in his own setting and time and to delve deeper into the writing of the influential Islamist thinker. Qutb, who was executed in Egypt in 1966, has been studied extensively but Thomas Hegghammer from Harvard University states: “We are dealing with a rare book that is likely to become a classic in the field of political Islam.”
July 26th, 2010
“Why Americans should care about Ahmadiyya Muslims”
posted by Jake AlterNaseem Mahdi, vice president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, hopes to call attention to the Ahmadiyya movement as a promoter of tolerance and peace.
July 21st, 2010
Tamara Sonn on The Future of Islam
posted by Jake AlterTamara Sonn, Professor of Religion and Humanities at the College of William and Mary, reviews The Future of Islam, by John L. Esposito.
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