Abdessamad Belhaj

Western political philosophy still shies away from including the Muslim world in its scope. Some political philosophers simply disregard Islam because it is not Western (a fate it shares with other traditions in Asia and elsewhere). Other scholars, more sophisticated, maintain that the vocabulary and the problems of Muslim political thought are specific, and thus, Western political philosophy cannot make sense of them. In a globalized world, this essentialist paradigm fails to withstand criticism. In his book, Joshua Mitchell proves Arabia, and other Muslim areas, to be understandable from the perspective of modern Western political philosophy. In particular, the author, perceptively, describes the transformations generated by modernity in the United States and the Arab countries. After the doubts cast by the failure of the Arab spring to promote democracy in Arabia, this book revives the discussion and hope about the prospects of democratization in the Middle East.