Institute of International Studies; University of California, Berkeley
See the Bibliographies on Islamic Issues
ot unlike the non-Muslim Third World, developing countries with significant
Muslim populations have experimented with a large variety of economic systems.
In general, these experiments have followed patterns common to the developing
world and reflect persistent tensions between equity and growth, import
substitution and export-led industrialization, and agricultural and industrial
investment. Due to the close ties between some Muslim countries and the global
economic and financial system, however, these tensions have expressed
themselves in particularly stark form in much of the Muslim world. For example,
oil wealth and the resulting flow of labor remittances and bilateral aid has
dramatically influenced the course of development in many Muslim countries,
stretching from Tunisia to Malaysia.
he extent to which religious doctrine has influenced economic policy and the
normative choices that underpin such policies varies tremendously over time
both within and among Muslim countries. Islam has no single, monolithic vision
of economic justice; as a result, there is a void at the heart of Islamic
doctrine which is filled by the complex interaction of political, social and
economic forces. Thus the vexing question of why Islam is brought into debates
on economic policy at some junctures and ignored at others becomes a task for
historical and sociological inquiry.
he extent to which religious movements gather followings in periods of
economic dislocation, and particularly in periods when the boundaries of the
economic community are changing will be a central question to this research
program.
eminar meetings addressing these questions will be held bi-weekly, organized
in four clusters. Each cluster of meetings will culminate in a two-day workshop,
attended by invited scholars to discuss issues and cases on which the seminar
group will already have acquired considerable background. We plan to invite a
scholar of Islamic doctrine to Berkeley for the year who will guide seminar
participants on the diverse sources of Muslim thought on social and economic
justice. With this background, the seminar participants will focus on four
distinct cases, each touching on a specific aspect of Islamic political
movements. The four seminar modules are thematically organized around relevant
cases. The topics are as follows:
o gain a useful comparative focus, we hope to emphasize the ways in which
Islamicist movements have changed in response to a trend that has affected each
and every one of these countries: the economic liberalization and increasing
interdependence of the 1980s and 1990s. This selection of cases and topics will provide explicit comparative material
to test hypotheses about the social base, organization and economic ideologies
of a diverse set of Islamic movements and examine the response of Muslim
communities to fundamental economic change. It is my hope that we will be able
to coordinate these meetings to draw in Berkeley scholars specializing in the
broader study of social movements. The interdisciplinary participants in these
seminars will also include graduate students from numerous departments.
hrough a number of Berkeley faculty who have particularly robust contacts with
leaders of Islamic movements, it is our aim to benefit from the views and
perspective of people who are actually involved in crafting the political,
economic and social programs of Islamicist movements. The inclusion of such
thinkers--scholars actually involved in designing the programs of Islamic
groups--will make this particular seminar and conference program unique: the
American academy has had little interest in actually learning about the views
of participants first-hand and, in the few cases where such participation was
invited, even less success in attracting those directly involved in thinking
about social and economic issues in collaborative projects.
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