Islamic Political Thought after the Arab Spring

Abstract

On December 7, 2012, Ermin Sinanovic (assistant professor, Department of
Political Science, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD) presented
his “Islamic Political Thought after the Arab Spring,” at the headquarters of
the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT; Herndon, VA). After opening
with several questions – How have the events in the Middle East and Arab
world influenced and continued to shape Islamic political thought? Why did
the Arab Spring happen now? What were the contributing factors? How is Islamic
political thought being reshaped by these events? – he began to make
his case that the underlying political theory of the Arab Spring represents
something new in Islamic political thought.
One of his contentions is that traditional Islamic political thought is now
seen as out of date, as caught up in the past. This situation began to change
first among the Shi‘ah and was instrumental in Iran’s revolution. The Arab
Spring has accelerated this reawakening among the Sunnis, which began in
the 1970s, thereby showing that Islamic political thought was no longer
static. But because this uprising is still so recent and ongoing, scholars are
still trying to make sense of it and thus all conclusions up to this point remain
tentative ...