Beyond Islamist Movements: Religion and Power in Dynamic Socio-Political Fields.

A decade ago, Islamists appeared set to dominate Middle East politics. Electoral and military defeats since then have generated renewed questions about Islamism's long-term political durability and, more broadly, about Islam's role in politics. Scholars have typically approached these questions through the study of individual Islamist movements. However, movement-centric approaches have struggled to shed light on diverse fields of Islamic political actors and the dynamic role religious concepts play in politics, including amongst actors with no explicit Islamic leaning. In response, this research poses the question 'What political significance do Islamic ideas, values, and concepts retain across socio-political lines in the absence of dominant Islamist movements?'. It explores thematic areas in which Islamic concepts have been contested and proposes an innovative conceptual framework in which Islamic ideas provide the lens through which to explore the role of religion in politics. This framework draws attention to ways in which diverse political actors contest the same religious concepts, including in overtly 'secular' spaces, and will inform responses to sub-questions surrounding the long-term viability of Islamist politics and future of a heterogeneous field of Islamic political actors. This research focuses on the case studies of Algeria and (Sunni Arab) Iraq. Selection criteria included empirical evidence of high religiosity in the absence of a dominant Sunni Islamist actor and a relative paucity of scholarship on Islamism. The research will adopt a qualitative research method centred on discourse and content analysis and plans to include a year of fieldwork in Algeria and Iraq.