The wordexceptionalismwas born of politics. In its earliest incarnation, the term was invariably prefaced by the qualifierAmericanand used by leftist intellectuals to describe the apparently unique ability of the United States to avoid class warfare.¹Muslim exceptionalism, on the other hand, is a much younger term that first earned currency in political science in the 1990s (Pipes 1996). Yet it bears a conceptual pedigree that easily predates Karl Marx. The idea that something sets Muslim politics and society apart from the politics and society of everyone else is the hallmark of Orientalism, a one-way conversation started...

The relationship between nationalism and Islam can be discussed in a number of ways, sometimes in concert, but most often in a discordant cacophony that confuses an analysis of Islamicthoughtwith an analysis of actual Muslimsocieties. Certainly the canon of Christian political thought, from Augustine to Aquinas to the liberation theology of Gustavo Gutiérrez, demonstrates that the ideas found in a single holy book can yield a multiplicity of political philosophies. In the same way, the relevant sura of the Quran and the many hadith of the Islamic tradition can yield a wide range of interpretations on the...

The relationship between a nation and any one of its nationals is personal. Within any national community, the definition of the nation is linked, inextricably, with the definition of the self. There is no shortage of social, political, economic, ethnic, and religious markers that may serve to mobilize the masses in a particular national contest. In many cases it is a particular marker that matters most—Protestant or Catholic in Northern Ireland, Sunni or Shiite in Arab Iraq, “color” in Apartheid South Africa, and so on. In this case, “a specific characteristic of a nation often becomes the rallying point...

The literature on Arab nationalism, however defined, is very broad, very deep, and very muddy.¹ Much of it is dedicated to the singular problem of defining “Arab” and consequently “Arab nationalism.” Some of this work developed from the study of nationalism and some of this work developed from the study of Arabs, yet the two tracks do not frequently converge. From the perspective of nations and nationalism scholarship, and aside from Ernest Gellner, of course, there are important contributions from Elie and Sylvia Kedourie, as well as John Breuilly, who argues Arab nationalism emerged first as “sort of modern anti-colonial...

Crossing through Habur Gate, Turkey’s largest border crossing with Iraq, is confusing. The route is very clear, but after steppingintoIraq, one finds no visiblesignsof Iraq. The flag waving over the border features a bright yellow sun instead of the three green stars of the familiar flag of Iraq. And there is no sound of Arabic. This is the Kurdistan Region of Iraq or—according to a Kurdish public relations campaign promoting international investment—the “Other Iraq.” This territory, about the size of Austria, composes nearly 20 percent of Iraq’s land area. It is also home to...

The Uyghur are a people with a long history but an imperiled future.¹ Once the masters of the famed Silk Road, the Uyghur are a Turkic people with a cultural legacy that predates Genghis Khan. Yet after a thousand years of settlement in a discrete region—a remarkable terrain surrounded by mountains and centered around a hellish desert—their homeland is now a province in a far larger state: the People’s Republic of China. Relations between the Uyghur and the Chinese, as neighbors over many centuries, may be characterized diplomatically as contestable. Yet it was not until 1949 and the...

The territory called Sindh has been inhabited continuously for millennia, most famously by the Indus Valley civilization and its great cities, Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, some five thousand years ago (see Figure 7.1). As a geographic frontier—its once-mighty Indus River separating the Indian subcontinent from the Near East—it has also seen no small number of massive migrations. It was crossed by Alexander the Great, invaded by the Arabs, conquered by the Persians, occupied by the British, and, much more recently, colonized by migrants from the east. Nonetheless, the Sindhi people pride themselves on their excellent hospitality. This was the...

Flying in from Delhi, a first view of the Kashmir Valley is magnificent: a fertile basin ringed by impossibly high Himalayan peaks. The largest city, Srinagar, was once a cool mountain retreat for colonials escaping India’s oppressive summer heat. It is a beautiful place and on this point, at least, there is general agreement. Divides emerge immediately, however, on who “owns” Kashmir, and what actually happened to the place—de facto or de jure—following partition in 1947. Among elites and intellectuals, there are interminable squabbles over who said what and when and the proper legal status of the territory....

Indonesia is home to more Muslims than any other country in the world. Nearly 90 percent of its 251 million people practice Islam; but even though they are nearly united in faith, Indonesians are divided socially—by ethnicity, culture, and language—and literally: from the western tip of Sumatra to the eastern border with Papua New Guinea, the state’s borders stretch across one-eighth the circumference of the globe. While the majority of Indonesians derive from Malay origins, there are at least four hundred different ethnic groups, most with “indigenous languages so different that communication between the communities is impossible” (Sundhaussen...

At the eastern edge of both Southeast Asia and the Islamic world, the southern Philippines mark the farthest reach of Muslim merchants and sailors who carried the faith overseas from its Arabian origins. The arrival of Islam in the thirteenth century preceded the arrival of Christianity by more than two centuries, though today more than more than 90 percent of the Philippines’ 104 million citizens are Catholic, while only 5 percent are Muslim.¹ Thus, it is easy to assume that the Muslims of the Philippines are essentially peripheral. There is some literal truth to this assumption, insofar as the great...

Whether based on a close reading of the Quran or a careful study of Middle Eastern politics, it is a popular convention and academic conceit that Muslim politics are exceptional. Muslim exceptionalism typically describes either an aversion to democracy or a resistance to nationalism, or both. This book directly challenges the supposition that Muslims are exceptionally resistant to the most common form of nationalism, which is typically secular and based on a shared and distinct ethnolinguistic culture. This question was generated by a theoretical literature that argues Islam is more than a religion, but rather an entire blueprint for living,...