The New Politics of Islam Pan-Islamic Foreign Policy in a World of States by Naveed S. Sheikh (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003. 206 pages.)

Abstract

This book, in the words of its author, is the outcome of a protracted intellectual
engagement with Islam in world affairs and an attempt to unravel the
semantics of civilizational categories (p. 1). Using seemingly Islamic raw
material, it incorporates postmodern and identity political analysis, as well
as the realist and functionalist investigative tools of social theory, in order to
offer a critical study of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) – the
interactive “arena” of self-neutralizing pathological Muslim states.
The book comprises four chapters plus a concluding summary. Chapter
1 consists of a critical introductory section to the nature of the “problem,”
and a literature review that links Islam to the contemporary international
relations (IR) discourse and emphasizing its salience. Chapter 2 outlines
the pan-Islamic paradigmatic and historical contexts in which the idea of the OIC was conceived and implemented, and points out the interplay of
national interests and transcendental religious imperatives. Chapter 3
challenges the myth of Islamic monolithism. Through a policy analysis of
case studies of three key Muslim states (viz., Saudi Arabia, Iran, and
Pakistan), Sheikh attempts to highlight how each state manipulates the
OIC in pursuit of its self-defined self-interest. Finally, chapter 4 seeks to
mitigate the previous chapter’s hard-nosed geopolitical realist analysis
by engaging in the paradigmatic and methodological debates surrounding
religious self-identity in foreign policy.
The study adopts an “eclectic” methodology that proclaims no specific
adherence to any dominant IR research paradigm (p. 19). It seeks to construct/
conceptualize the Islamic narrative as derived from classical theological
and jurisprudential treatises, both modified and reapplied in the course
of modern history. Subsequently, it attempts to deconstruct this narrative in
light of the “true-life” state policy of each case study. Finally it reconstructs
the IR discipline by resorting to a sociological understanding of foreign policy
that integrates soft ideational and hard material factors (p. 18) ...