Political Islam and the State in Africa By Hussein Solomon, Akeem Fadare, and Firoza Butler, eds. (Pretoria: Centre for International Political Studies (University of Pretoria), 2008. 260 pages.)

Abstract

Political Islam has been under the scholarly spotlight for over two decades.
The events in the Muslim heartlands and beyond have caused scholars to
critically investigate the relationship between religion and politics throughout
the era of secularism; some arguing that religion is on its way out, and
others stating that it is gradually gaining ground in the public arena. For the
western-trained scholar, the religion-politics divide is a sine qua non; however,
for those outside the scholarly circles, religion has always been connected
to and intertwined with politics. This has been the case with Islam.
The editors of this text, which focuses on the nature of political Islam and
the nation-state on the African continent, have brought together a crop of
scholars with divergent views. It consists of nine chapters, an introduction
coauthored by Hussein Solomon and Akeem Fadare, and a conclusion coauthored
by Solomon and Firoza Butler ...