An Iranian born in 1906, when the constitution was granted, would have had to wait until he was thirty-four to find a history of what was happening at the time of his birth. Kasravi's first volume appeared in 1940 and Malikzada's in 1948. Censorship was not the cause of this strange delay. Could it be that disillusion with the outcome of the movement ran so deep in the minds of intellectuals that no one wished to relive the story by writing it? The newly established Pahlavi state tried to glorify the ancient heritage of Persia and to shift the historical landscape from the immediacy of the constitutional era to the politically irrelevant past of pre-Islamic Iran. It is somehow peculiar—and perhaps a measure of the time—that an author of the Iranian constitution, the Mushir al-Daula (Hasan Pirniya) undertook, when in political retirement, to write not a history of the constitutional movement but a monumental work on ancient Iran. Kasravi speculated about the reasons for the nonexistence of a reliable history. The opportunist elitist reformers (“carpetbaggers”) who shifted sides during the movement “were reluctant to see the history of that movement truthfully written.” The Mushir al-Daula was one of them. Kasravi complained that when he began publishing his history, the sons, relatives, and followers of these men objected to his critical historical evaluation.

Islamic revivalism is often believed to be solely committed to the Islamization of society, viewing politics as merely an instrument in the struggle to realize its aim. The record of Islamic revivalist movements—as exemplified by one of the oldest and most influential of them, the Jamaʿat-i Islami, or Islamic party of Pakistan—however, brings this presumption into question. The nature of the linkage between Islamic revivalism as a particular interpretive reading of Islam and politics is more complicated than is generally believed. Political interests, albeit still within an Islamic framework, play a more important and central role in the unfolding of revivalism—even overriding the commitment to Islamization—than is often ac knowledged. Participation in the political process eschews a blind commitment to Islamization and encourages adherence to organizational interests, and as is evi dent in the case of Pakistan, to the democratic process, characteristics that are not usually associated with Islamic movements. The dynamics and pace of this pro cess are controlled by the struggles for power within an Islamic movement as well as vis-à-vis the state. It is through grappling with these struggles that the commit ment to Islamization is weighed against the need to adhere to organizational and political interests; this is the process that governs the development of Islamic re vivalism. Beyond this general assertion, the manner in which the struggle for power unfolds, the variables that influence it, and the nature of its impact on the development of revivalism need to be explored further.

During the winter and spring of 1990 Farghanachi Uzbek refugees from Afghanistan were the subjects of my ethnographic research in Karachi, Pakistan, where they form an unregistered community. The Farghanachi frequently play cassette tapes that explain the ongoing jihad in Afghanistan through stories about the Prophet Muhammad. Women and children use the tapes to accompany conversation and to facilitate discussion of Islam and martyrdom; occasionally they cry at the stories, which remind them of their own dead kin, the extraordinary circumstances of jihad, and their transformed lives. This paper draws conclusions about the ideal roles of women in jihad from a tape recorded in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan. On the tape the exemplary behavior of a mother, wife, and daughter during the famous battle of Uhud that Muhammad and his followers fought against the Meccans is recounted. The infamous Hind the liver eater—who symbolizes the brutality and violence of female vengeance—is ultimately vanquished by these good women.

In his seminal and pioneering work, al-Risāla, al-Shafiʿi, the founder of juridical uṣul al-fiqh, laid down the following maxim:

God has obliged us to follow everything the Prophet instituted (sanna). And He has rendered adherence to this obedience to Him and turning away from it disobedience [to Him] for which He excuses no one.

This article examines the role gender plays in the pilgrimage rites in Mecca at the turn of this century. I argue, as a student of local cultures rather than a scholar of universalistic Islamic beliefs, that portions of the hajj at that time had a special significance for Arab Muslims in and near the Hijaz. Arab pilgrims served, ad dressed, and even dressed the Kaʿba like a bride. By ascribing feminine charac teristics to the Kaʿba, they temporarily transformed human gender roles and constructed an alternative model of gender that could be utilized when negotiating and renegotiating gender roles in everyday life.

Since the 1950s Turkish foreign policy toward the Middle East has centered on the question of support for the Arab position on the Palestinian question. Ever since the U.N. General Assembly resolution of November 1947 that partitioned Palestine between the Palestinians and Israelis, all the Arab countries—even though diversity of regime has prevented them from otherwise acting as a unit in Middle Eastern politics—have consistently supported the establishment of an independent Palestinian state (in opposition to the Israelis and the United States) as a condition for stability in the Middle East. In November 1973, the heads of the Arab states declared the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—created in 1964 through the initiative of the Arab League—to be the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and they have supported its efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip ever since.

The political mobilization of Palestinians in the occupied territories in the 1980s was closely tied to the rise of a new elite and the marginalization of the traditional notable leadership. Such mobilization was necessary in order to overcome, at least in part, the class, kin, and regional cleavages that had long fragmented Palestinian society and that had been used by occupying powers to undermine collective national action. The mobilization of Palestinian society by a new elite was made possible by structural changes that had led to the peripheralization of the traditional elite. The three most important structural changes were the dramaticrise of wage labor after 1967, which transfigured a basically peasant society, extensive land confiscations, and the widespread availability of university education after 1972. Each of these developments helped to break traditional patron–client relations that had been the social base of the old elite and paved the way for the rise of a more extensive, better educated, more rural, and nonlanded elite which had gained cohesion in thePalestinian universities. In addition, these developments, and in particular the diminution of the Palestinian peasantry, meant that large segments of the population had, in effect, been cleaved from their social moorings and were, thus, more open for recruitment into new forms of social relations and organizations. It is to refer to these structural changes in Palestinian society that I use the term “social mobilization.”