Samira Haj – författare

This book's innovative approach makes it an important intervention into the field of modern Iraqi and Arab history. Samira Haj's discussion of the factors that led to, and paradoxically caused the failure of, the 1958 revolution in Iraq forms the framework for her critique of conventional Eurocentric notions of nationalism, revolution, and modernity. Haj explains the pervasive violence of Iraq's political scene not by invoking ageless images of sectarian strife and irrational bloodlust but by showing that the violent political battles of the 1950s and 1960s were the result of fundamental changes in the system of ownership and agricultural production during the nineteenth century. Furthermore, she shows that the national government's smashing of the popular movement and the dismantling of its various grassroots organizations in 1963 signified the beginning of the end of participatory politics in Iraq.

Samira Haj conceptualizes Islam through a close reading of two Muslim reformers—Muhammad ibn 'Abdul Wahhab (1703–1787) and Muhammad 'Abduh (1849–1905)—each representative of a distinct trend, chronological as well as philosophical, in modern Islam. Their works are examined primarily through the prism of two conceptual questions: the idea of the modern and the formation of a Muslim subject. Approaching Islam through the works of these two Muslims, she illuminates aspects of Islamic modernity that have been obscured and problematizes assumptions founded on the oppositional dichotomies of modern/traditional, secular/sacred, and liberal/fundamentalist. The book explores the notions of the community-society and the subject's location within it to demonstrate how Muslims in different historical contexts responded differently to theological and practical questions. This knowledge will help us better understand the conflicts currently unfolding in parts of the Arab world.