Islam and International Relations: Exploring Community and the Limits of Universalism

International Relations tends to rely on concepts that developed on the European continent, obscuring the fact that its history is far less ‘international’ than one might expect. But in today’s global world, who does this ignore and marginalize? And what impact does that have on the discipline’s potential to assess world politics?

This book explores an Islamic approach to the ‘international’, showing that Islam can contribute keen insights into how we ‘do’ IR, and how we might change that practice to be more inclusive, while also highlighting the limits of an ‘Islamic International Relations’. Exploring conceptualizations of community and difference in Islamic traditions, the book relates these notions to concepts that are considered universal in IR, such as state-based politics and the necessity for secularism. In this way, the book shows how the study of political Islam might help to interrogate and redefine key concepts within international politics. In a world of continuing polarization between ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’, this book offers IR a chance to engage in a constructive dialogue with Islamic traditions, in order to better understand global politics.