While recent events in the Arab world seem to herald the triumph of political Islam, this presentation will argue that we have in fact firmly entered the era of post-Islamism. Where some well known articulations of the post-Islamism thesis have tended to focus on the dilution and waning legitimacy of Islamist ideology, the phenomenon is actually better understood by focusing on pluralization within the sphere of religiously-based social activism in the Muslim world. Drawing on fieldwork and case studies from a wide range of global settings—including Egypt, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, and Indonesia—this presentation will profile new forms of Islamic activism driven by globalization and information technology that directly compete for the market share of ideas previously dominated by conventional Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Peter Mandaville is a professor of public & international affairs and director of the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. In 2010-12, at the height of the Arab uprisings, he served as a member of Hillary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. He is the author of Global Political Islam (2007) and Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma (2001), and has also co-edited a number of edited volumes in the fields of international relations and comparative politics.

Joint Seminar: Department of Political and Social Change and Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies