Sufis, Salafis, and Islamists

Rural Islamism during the ‘war on Terror’: a Tanzanian Case Study

In the Tanzanian country town of Rwangwa, a bitter confrontation has developed between Sufi Muslims and Islamist reformers. The Islamists draw on Middle Eastern inspiration, but the conflict arises equally from local, regional and national context, and is cultural as well as religious and political. Situated in an economically and educationally disadvantaged region, access to land and trade for...

How Many Radical Islamists? Indirect Evidence from Five Countries

High fertility and low market returns to schooling are predicted by a clubgood model of religious sects. We investigate fertility and returns to education among families of graduates of Muslim religious schools in Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Cote D’Ivoire, and Pakistan. Fertility is significantly higher among these families in all five countries. Returns to education are generally lower among...

The Impact of Soviet Policy on Female Sufis in Chechnya

Sufis on parade: the performance of Black, African, and Muslim identities.

For over twenty years, West African Muslims from the Murid Sufi Brotherhood have organized the annual Cheikh Amadou Bamba Day parade in New York City. It is a major site where they redefine the boundaries of their African identities, cope with the stigma of blackness, and counteract an anti-Muslim backlash. Rather than viewing religion as a subset of ethnicity, this study shows how African Muri...

Islamists and Nationalists: Rebel Motivation and Counterinsurgency in Russia’s North Caucasus

How does religion shape the nature of insurgency? Do Islamist insurgents fight differently from those with secular aims, like national selfdetermination? Do they select different types of targets, use different military strategies, respond to different types of incentives? Scholarly attention to the role of religion in civil and interstate war has increased in recent years, but there remains li...