Approved For Public Release; Distribution is Unlimited / Political Islam has emerged as an unambiguous threat to liberal and
Western-leaning regimes throughout the world. Public discourse has focused on
the Islamic nature of this challenge, emphasizing the cultural characteristics of
the threat. In contrast, this thesis argues that Political Islam is essentially a
political challenge. Further, states can and do dictate the political space
available to Islamists. In order to illustrate this argument, Indonesia and Algeria
serve as case studies. These two culturally, economically and ethnically diverse
nations share a predominance of Muslim adherents. Each nation has struggled
with Political Islam. Yet, the consequences of state policy have profoundly
differed. Recent innovations in political science theory are employed to provide a
uniform structure of comparison between the two case studies. The thesis
concludes that states make a choice whether to play offense or defense against
their political opposition. When states choose the offensive, using targeted,
preemptive repression to subsume the political space, they are successful.
When states choose the defensive, using indiscriminate, reactive repression to
foreclose political space, they are failures. This thesis implies that states, far
from being hapless victims of fervently religious movements, can exercise a
broad array of policy options to compete with Political Islam. / Major, United States Marine Corps / Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:nps.edu/oai:calhoun.nps.edu:10945/1179 |
| Date | 06 1900 |
| Creators | Anderson, Mark A., Costain, Marc |
| Contributors | Nasr, Vali, Lavoy, Peter, Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)., Department of National Security Affairs |
| Publisher | Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School |
| Source Sets | Naval Postgraduate School |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | x, 101 p. ;, application/pdf |
| Rights | This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States. |
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