New Islamist Movements and Concepts of Citizenship

Research output

Complete citation

Poljarević, Emin. “New Islamist Movements and Concepts of Citizenship.” In Routledge Handbook of Citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa, edited by Roel Meijer, James N. Sater, and Zahra R. Babar, 201–214. London: Routledge, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429058288-18.

Status

Published (2020)

Publication type

Peer-reviewed handbook chapter

Overview

This chapter analyses how newer Islamist movements conceptualise citizenship amid transformations in state authority, political participation, and religious activism across the Middle East and North Africa. It asks how movements rooted in Islamic normative vocabularies negotiate the modern legal category of citizenship, particularly its claims to equality, rights, membership, and political obligation. The discussion distinguishes doctrinal formulations from the strategic and institutional pressures that shape movement practice. Rather than treating Islamism as uniformly hostile to citizenship, the chapter identifies different ways in which Islamic movements reinterpret belonging, representation, and civic responsibility in response to national political contexts. Its contribution is a comparative framework that places Islamist debates within the wider history of citizenship in the region and clarifies the tension between universal religious commitments, territorial states, pluralism, and equal political membership.

Research question or central concern

How do contemporary Islamist movements reinterpret citizenship, rights, political membership, and civic responsibility within modern territorial states?

Main argument, approach, and contribution

The chapter uses comparative conceptual analysis to distinguish Islamic normative commitments from the institutional and strategic adaptations of Islamist movements. It argues that their approaches to citizenship are plural and context-dependent rather than uniformly rejectionist. The contribution is to clarify how religious authority, state structures, pluralism, and political participation interact.

Keywords

Islamism; citizenship; Middle East; North Africa; political participation; pluralism; Islamic movements