Understanding Political Islam

'An outstanding book that sheds clarity on the oft-obscure debate about Islam and politics. Alternately personal and scholarly, Burgat takes the reader through his extensive field work in the Arab Muslim world to share the conversations and revelations that have shaped his approach to the subject. He also engages head-on with the divisive debates that have poisoned the discussion of Islam's place in the West since 9/11, not least in his native France. Engagingly written and passionately argued, Understanding Political Islam is essential reading.'
Professor Eugene Rogan, Director of St Antony's College Middle East Centre, University of Oxford

'Understanding Political Islam? finally makes accessible to English readers the formidable intellectual journey of the prominent French scholar, Francois Burgat, and provides the most up to date synthesis of his research that spans over four decades and multiple countries from North Africa to the Middle east.

Francois Burgat is an original and unique voice who has continuously challenged the dominant assumptions on political Islam by showing for example that Islam as a religion is not the main factor of Islamism, and therefore religious reform is not the solution to the existing Islamist predicament.

Building on Burgat's longstanding fieldwork, this book provides a rich and in depth analysis of the multifaceted and evolving reality of Islamism from its origin in the 1960s to the Arab Spring and ISIS. It is a must read for students of politics and experts of the Middle east.'

Professor Jocelyne Cesari, University of Birmingham and Georgetown University, author of What is Political Islam?

'A magisterial statement on the study of Islamic politics by one of its most distinguished scholars, this is also a deeply personal book that summarises a career spent in North Africa and the Middle East living among and speaking to some of the region's most important political actors.'

Professor Faisal Devji, Director of St Antony's College Asian Studies Centre, University of Oxford

Understanding Political Islam retraces the human and intellectual development that led François Burgat to a very firm conviction: that the roots of the tensions that afflict the Western world's relationship with the Muslim world are political rather than ideological. In his compelling account of the interactions between personal life-history and professional research trajectories, Burgat examines how the rise of political Islam has been expressed: first in the Arab world, then in its interactions with European and Western societies. An essential continuation of his work on Islamism, Burgat's unique field research and 'political trespassing' marks an overdue challenge to the academic mainstream.