Islam and Politics in the Middle East

"Although the book does not change the state of our knowledge of the trends in opinion among Muslims on social and political issues, it is still different from surveys conducted by think thanks and institutes in that it provides a great deal of nuance, explanation and caution in reading the findings."—Journal of Islamic Studies

"Tessler (Univ. of Michigan) analyzes the Carnegie data set surveys conducted in 15 Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and North Africa from 1988 to 2011. . . Recommended."—Choice

"Mark Tessler has been a leading contributor to our understanding of the Middle East and North Africa for decades. In Islam and Politics in the Middle East, he does it again by providing sophisticated analysis of 42 surveys of public opinion in the region, discerning the views ordinary men and women hold of Islam and politics. It's a masterful and compelling work."—Shibley Telhami, author of The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East

"Islam and Politics in the Middle East is a solid and excellent empirical exploration of the factors underlying support for political Islam in the Arab world. Tessler nuances our understanding of Islam by breaking it down into values, practices, and political orientations. He pays attention to cross-country variation and structural influences on the role of Islam in everyday politics. This is a careful book that not only contributes to our overall theorizing and empirical understanding of political Islam, but corrects the dominant and misleading conventional wisdom about the monolithic nature of 'everything Islam.' Tessler brings to this project decades of expertise on this topic, a wealth of empirical data, and deep-seated understanding of the politics underlying Islam in the Arab world."—Amaney A. Jamal, Princeton University