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Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison

In this book, Ahmet T. Kuru explores just how it came to pass that the Muslim Middle East in the modern period experienced a dramatic decline in cultural and political dynamism relative to the societies of Western Europe.

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.

About the Author

Ahmet T. Kuru is professor of political science at San Diego State University. He is the author of award-winning Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey (Cambridge UP 2009) and co-editor (with Alfred Stepan) of Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey (Columbia UP 2012). Kuru’s new book, Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison (Cambridge University Press, 2019) became the co-winner of the American Political Science Association’s International History and Politics Section Best Book Award. His works have been translated into Arabic, Bosnian, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Turkish.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I. Present:
1. Violence and Peace
2. Authoritarianism and Democracy
3. Socio-Economic Underdevelopment and Development
Part II. History:
4. Progress: Scholars and Merchants (Seventh to Eleventh Centuries)
5. Crisis: The Invaders (Twelfth to Fourteenth Centuries)
6. Power: Three Muslim Empires (Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries)
7. Collapse: Western Colonialism and Muslim Reformists (Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries)
Conclusion

Bibliographic Information

Title: Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison

Author(s): Ahmet T. Kuru

Publisher: ‎  Cambridge University Press

Length: 316 pages

ISBN:978-1108409476

Pub. Date: September 5, 2019

Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment

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