Moaddel, Mansoor

PERSONAL:

Education: Shiraz University, Iran, B.A., 1975; Western Michigan University, M.A., 1979; University of Wisconsin, Ph.D., 1986.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, 426 Thompson St., Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Wisconsin—Madison, lecturer, 1983-86; Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, assistant professor, 1987-91, associate professor, 1991-96, professor of sociology, 1996—; University of Michigan, Population Studies Center, Ann Arbor, research affiliate, 2005—.

MEMBER:

American Sociological Association, Association for the Sociology of Religion, Middle East Studies Association of North America, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, International Society for Iranian Studies, World Values Survey Association, Phi Kappa Phi.

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, 1989; U.S. Information Agency-American Center of Oriental Research fellowship, 1997; National Science Foundation fellow, 1996-99, 1999-2000, 2003-04, 2004-06.

WRITINGS:

Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Kamran Talattof) Contemporary Debates in Islam: An Anthology of Modernist and Fundamentalist Thought, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY). 2000.

(With Kamran Talattof) Modernist and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam: A Reader, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2002.

Jordanian Exceptionalism: A Comparative Analysis of State-Religion Relationships in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Syria, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2002.

Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism: Episode and Discourse, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2005.

(Editor) Values and Perceptions of the Islamic and Middle Eastern Publics, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to books, including Social Movements in Iran: Historical, Comparative, and Theoretical Perspectives, edited by John Foran, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1994; Social Movements: Critiques, Concepts, Case Studies, edited by Stanford M. Lyman, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1994; Encyclopedia of the Middle East, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1996; Human Values and Social Change: Findings from Values Surveys, edited by Ronald Inglehart, Brill (Leiden, Netherlands), 2003; The Oxford Handbook of Global Religions, edited by Mark Juergensmeyer, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to journals, including Footnote, Social Forces, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, American Journal of Sociology, Perspective on Politics, Journal of Democracy, Contemporary Sociology, Studies in Comparative International Development, Michigan Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, International Journal of Society, Culture, and Politics, Arab Studies Quarterly, Theory and Society, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Critique, American Sociological Review, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Perspectives on Politics. Member of the editorial boards of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and Contemporary Sociology.

SIDELIGHTS:

Eastern Michigan University sociology professor Mansoor Moaddel is best known for his research into the emerging attitudes and ideas of the Middle East. His specialty is understanding the sociological trends underlying movements within modern Islam, including the emergence of fundamentalism in the international Muslim commun-ity. In that capacity, he has presented before the U.S. Congress on the subjects of Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. He also examines the "values and attitudes of the Middle Eastern and Islamic publics," according to the University of Michigan Population Studies Center Web site. "He has carried out values surveys in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. He has also carried out youth surveys in Egypt and Saudi Arabia." The results of Moaddel's research have begun to change the understanding of Islam and Islamic culture throughout the world. He shows, according to Fred Rhodes, writing in the journal Middle East about the volume Contemporary Debates in Islam: An Anthology of Modernist and Fundamentalist Thought, "how Islamic modernism and fundamentalism were diverse discourses on a set of historically significant issues that Islamic societies have faced since the 19th century."

One of the issues facing contemporary understanding of the Muslim world is that in it, in the words of David Owusu-Ansah, writing in the Historian, "there is no separation between civil and political society in the Muslim world because Islam as a religion is all encompassing. That being the case, politics in the Muslim world became more radicalized and the religion more fundamentalist as the West encroached on Muslim culture." Moaddel argues that this is not the case, and Western thinkers cannot look at Islam as a kind of successor-state to the Soviet Union and the world-wide communist movement. In Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism: Episode and Discourse, Moaddel demonstrates that Islamic fundamentalism is mostly a reaction to secular authoritarian rule at home. Fundamentalist movements in Algeria, Egypt, and—especially—Iran were formed as a reaction to oppression within those countries. At the same time, reaction against the West emerges as a kind of anti-colonialism, a reaction to the role the West played in the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in the years after World War I, and to the years of colonial control over North Africa and the Mideast.

The key to understanding Moaddel's approach is the idea that Islam, while it is a world religion, is not a monolithic world community. There are regional and ethnic variations within the Muslim world; while a Muslim from the West African city of Timbuktu would agree that he worships the same God as a Muslim from Jakarta, Indonesia, the ways in which Islam is practiced vary significantly from place to place. In addition, there is little agreement on important issues like national identity, the status of women, the shape and role of the state, how international relations within the Muslim community should be governed, how to pursue relations with the non-Muslim world, and even the relationship between religion and the state. While some questions remain (including the question of whether one can legitimately examine Muslim ideas through the lens of ideas developed during the European Enlightenment), these factors tend to separate, rather than unify, the Muslim world, and they demonstrate the extent to which Islam is neither monolithic nor universal.

Furthermore, the shape of the fundamentalist movements is dictated by the type of regime they oppose. For example, explained Charles Kurzman in the journal Social Forces, "in the 1930s, Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian literary critic who later became one of the foremost ideologists of Islamic revolution, was an advocate of modern Arabic poetry and a supporter of liberal nationalism politics, whose pro-democracy ideology reflected the pluralism of the Egyptian constitutional monarchy. In the following decades, Qutb abandoned liberal nationalism and joined the Muslim Brotherhood, ultimately favoring violent overthrow of the Egyptian state in the name of an Islamic ideology that reflected the military-led state's ‘totalitarian’ ambitions." "In this way," declared Eric Engel Tuten on H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, "liberal, constitutional, and nationalist thought in Egypt, Syria, and Iran evolved in opposition to the three major discourses of monarchical absolutism, the orthodox 'ulama, and the ideology of colonial domination."

In the same way, Moaddel argues, opposition movements to religious totalitarian regimes adopt a secular point of view. "Whereas the secular, intrusive states in Algeria, Egypt, prerevolutionary Iran, and Syria were key in the development of Islamic fundamentalist discourse, post-revolutionary Iran demonstrated the flip side of this argument, ‘in that the fundamentalism of the Islamic Republic had a secularizing effect on the discourse of the opposition movement,’" Tuten stated. "And, within the context of this discourse, a strong reformist movement emerged by the 1990s." In each case, Moaddel points out, a revolution or military coup was preceded by an ideological discourse, an attempt to arrive at a national consensus. The processes that brought about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the modern era, he states, are still operating.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Journal of Sociology, May, 1994, John Foran, review of Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution, p. 1679; November, 2003, Robert W. Hefner, review of Jordanian Exceptionalism: A Comparative Analysis of State-Religion Relationships in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Syria, p. 787; May, 2006, Bassam Tibi, review of Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism: Episode and Discourse, p. 1958.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, May, 1993, S. Ayubi, review of Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution, p. 1533.

Contemporary Sociology, September, 1993, Misagh Parsa, review of Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution, p. 689; July, 2003, Ziad Munson, review of Jordanian Exceptionalism, p. 499.

Government and Opposition, spring, 1994, Shireen Mahdavi, review of Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution.

Historian, winter, 2006, David Owusu-Ansah, review of Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism.

International History Review, September, 2006, James L. Gelvin, review of Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism, p. 682.

International Journal of Middle East Studies, August, 2007, John Calvert, review of Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism, p. 461.

Journal of Third World Studies, spring, 1996, Ali Kamali, review of Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution.

Middle East, December, 2000, Fred Rhodes, review of Contemporary Debates in Islam: An Anthology of Modernist and Fundamentalist Thought, p. 41.

Middle East Journal, spring, 1994, Shahrough Akhavi, review of Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution; summer, 1995, review of Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution; spring, 2003, Burcu Islam, review of Modernist and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam.

Muslim World, January, 2004, Tahir Uluc, review of Modernist and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam: A Reader, p. 139.

Reference & Research Book News, May, 1993, review of Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution, p. 8; November, 2000, review of Contemporary Debates in Islam, p. 10; May, 2002, review of Jordanian Exceptionalism, p. 36.

Social Forces, March, 2006, Charles Kurzman, review of Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism, p. 1855.

World Politics, July, 1995, review of Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution, p. 555.

ONLINE

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online,http://www.h-net.org/ (March, 2007), Eric Engel Tuten, review of Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism.

University of Michigan, Population Studies Center Web site,http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/ (May 1, 2008), author profile.