Because of the tight connections between local social actors and mosques, armed groups preaching more radical Islam precepts could either make headway when leading families went along with them or if they altered the power balance among families to their own advantage. My paper provides a sense of the religious and political networks surrounding each of these two parties, including (a) a network of independent schools functioning largely as private businesses (with each network competing with state schools and other private schools for students); (b) various dawa (religious education) organizations affiliated with ideologues from each group as well as mass-based movements like the (Sunni Deobandi) Tablighi Jama’at; and (c) militant proxy groups operating in places like East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Kashmir, and Afghanistan. Whether you are already a Muslim or are only beginning to explore Islam, each page of this book provides new insights into the faith as seen through the eyes of a believer.

What are the functions of angels? Philosophically, angels are “pure contingent spirits.” Philo of Alexandria identifies the angel with the Logos as far as the angel is the immaterial voice of God. Other angels came to be conventionally depicted in long robes, and in the later Middle Ages they often wear the vestments of a deacon, a cope over a dalmatic; this costume was used especially for Gabriel in Annunciation scenes-for example the Annunciation in Washington by Jan van Eyck. In this project, however, I came away with a greater appreciation for the domestic side of this equation and the role that generational divides play in activating or intensifying domestic cleavages. At the national level, however, the electoral success of Pakistani Islamists has been quite limited, meaning that collaboration with other parties has always been the name of the game. At the provincial level, Islamists in Pakistan have not merely joined coalition governments in Pakistan, but led them-thus providing Pakistani Islamists with an opportunity to enact religious policies under a broad hisba (enforcement-of-piety) banner as well as social justice policies of a more explicitly economic nature (while, at the same time, suffering at the polls for their failure to satisfy complex constituent demands, just like any other party).

Focusing on Pakistan, my paper tracks two broad sets of Islamist actors-the Jama’at-e-Islami (JI) and the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). Broadly, one might expect patterns of transnational spillover to figure prominently within transnationally networked Islamist formations like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jama’at-e-Islami as well as transnationally networked jihadi formations like al-Qaida. In general, this project includes some countries where Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi factions have been deeply involved in anti-state violence (Syria, Libya) as well as countries where both groups have shied away from, or strongly disavowed, violence. Since the early 1970s, both groups have joined ruling coalitions, and the JUI has also led coalitions governing at a provincial level. Likewise, in Malaysia new right-wing NGOs and lobby groups like the Persatuan Ulama Malaysia and Teras Keupayaan Melayu have taken center stage on issues ranging from moral policing to the promotion of Malay-Muslim dominance (Ketuanan Melayu), bypassing the more established Malay-Muslim political parties and civil society organizations of the past.

In Malaysia, the Pan-Malayan Islamic Party (PAS) remains a member of a political coalition which includes socialist and non-Muslim parties, though the coalition has started to crumble because of differences between reformists and traditionalists (assuming an “evolutionary scale” of Islamism exists, then Islamism in Malaysia is arguably “less evolved” than in its MENA counterparts?). There is scant information in any of the other papers on MENA cases of Islamist participation on ruling or formal opposition coalitions, and certainly not with non-Muslim parties. Across the different countries examined in this project, the context within which Islamist strategies are formulated is shaped by specific, robust, and enduring forms of constitutional architecture (electoral, monarchical, or both) as well as specific patterns of state breakdown. Most of the planets in our solar system are named after what? Third, in the case of the PKS, several recent high profile cases of corruption involving senior party officials highlight an interesting point which some of the papers discuss-the matter of fixing, overhauling, or moralizing the political system. As for the PKS, it too was a part of the ruling coalition led by the Democratic Party, and at its peak occupied up to four Cabinet positions.