Limits of Islamism
Jamaat-e-Islami in Contemporary India and Bangladesh

This book focuses on Islamism as a political ideology by taking up the case study of Jamaat-e-Islami in contemporary India and Bangladesh.

Maidul Islam (Author)

9781107080263, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 March 2015

340 pages
24.3 x 16.2 x 3.1 cm, 0.71 kg

'Maidul Islam's strength lies in the case studies he conducts in India and Bangladesh … The interlinking of history with the ideology and the different lines of approach of the Jamaat in the two countries adds a special dimension to the book. The facts about the Jamaat's electoral performances are informative. The comparison between the Jamaat on the Indian soil and its counterpart in Bangladesh shows the amount of hard work that must have been undertaken in order to arrive at a conclusion. His conclusion about the contrasting responses of the Jamaat in the two countries is worth noting.' Shams Afif Siddiqi, The Telegraph

This book focuses on Islamism as a political ideology by taking up the case study of Jamaat-e-Islami in contemporary India and Bangladesh. The book will address how, in a contemporary globalized world, Islamism constructs an antagonistic frontier and how it mobilizes people behind its political project. The book also deals with the Islamist critique of neoliberal economic policies and 'western cultural globalization'. The book examines the dynamics from the formation of Islamist politics for the struggle for hegemony to failure to become a hegemonic force in Bangladesh. The contradiction between Islamic universalism/Islamist populism, on one hand, and a politics of Muslim particularism in India, on the other, is revealed in this study. Finally, this book traces the contemporary crisis of Islamist populism in providing an alternative to neoliberalism.

1. Islamism and ideology: philosophical issues and analytical categories
2. Islamism in neoliberal India
3. Ideological articulations of Jamaat-e-Islam Hind
4. Islamism in a Muslim majority context: the case of Bangladesh
5. The crisis of Islamist population of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami
6. Islamism in contemporary India and Bangladesh: comparative overview of the politics of alternative.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB], Islamic studies [JFSR2]