The recent prominence of Islamic politics in the Middle East has raised important questions about society, politics and culture. It has posed a challenge to the main theoretical approaches in the social sciences from Marxism to modernization theory and it has given some credence to the idea that the world of Islam is essentially distinct from Europe, and follows a course of development dictated by its own history and culture. In this book, Sami Zubaida challenges these diverse opinions in favor of a general political sociology capable of dealing with the historical and cultural...

In this magisterial work, Sami Zubaida draws on a distinguished career's worth of experience trying to understand the region to address the fundamental question in Middle East studies: what is the Middle East? He argues, controversially, that to see it through the prism of Islam, as it is conventionally viewed, is to completely misunderstand it. Many of what we think of as the ""Islamic"" characteristics of the region are products of culture and society, not religion. To think of Islam itself as an essential, anti-modern force in the region rather than something shaped by specific...