Subject Portal » Islamic Studies » Course Guides »

Need Help?

Margaret Schaus, Reference Librarian and Bibliographer (HC)

Sections:

Finding Background Information
Identifying Books
Finding Journal Articles
Using News and Commentary Sources

Related Subjects:

Middle Eastern Studies

Databases A-Z:

Other:

Pol Sci 345 : Islam, Democracy, and Development (HC)

Finding Background Information:

The following sources written by researchers in the field provide overviews of issues and events involved in the interactions of Islam and politics. When using an article in an encyclopedia or handbook, always check the bibliography at the end of the article for further reading. It will provide a selective list of the books, articles, and, sometimes, Web resources considered to be the most up-to-date and reliable. This makes a good starting point for your research.

Annual review of political science (Palo Alto, Calif. : Online)

Holdings:
(Bryn Mawr College) Available from 1998-present.
(Haverford College) Available from 1998-present.
(Swarthmore College) Available from 1998-present.

Publisher: Palo Alto, Calif. : Annual Reviews, Inc.,

Daniel Philpott. "Has the Study of Global Politics Found Religion?." Annual Review of Political Science 12 (2009).

Yahya Sadowski. "Political Islam." Annual Review of Political Science 9 (2006).

These two titles are literature reviews on recent politics involving Islam. The authors describe and evaluate current scholarship in detail. This is a quick and reliable guide to important publications you may need for your work.

Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim world

Publisher: New York : Macmillan Reference USA : c2004.

Europe since 1914

New encyclopedia of Africa

Oxford Islamic studies online

Provides full-text encyclopedia articles, primary source documents, maps, images, and timelines relating to Islamic studies. Also contains two full-text interpretations of the Qur'an and a concordance. Articles cover the history, peoples, beliefs, individuals, and cultures that constitute the world of Islam.

Political handbook of the world

Publisher: Washington, DC : CQ Press,

Provider: CQPress

This authoritative reference book provides detailed information on the major aspects of each country's government and political party system. International organizations are profiled as well. Good source for information on current events, elections, political history, and more.

Religiously Remapped: Mapping Religious Trends in Africa

Sharia Debates in Africa

This web site makes available material from an ongoing research project at the University of Bayreuth. The countries studied are Kenya, Nigeria, Susan, and Tanzania.

Identifying Books:

Use the Tripod Catalog to look for relevant books owned by Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Swarthmore.

The following subject searches are a sampling of possibilities. To find materials on a topic, try doing a keyword search in the Tripod Catalog to find relevant materials and then using the subject headings assigned to those materials to find more titles.

          muslims europe [Subject Search]

          islam and politics africa [Subject Search]

    sharia nigeria* [keyword search]

Tripod - For locating books, journals, and other materials held in the Tri-College libraries. Deliveries within the Trico usually arrive in one or two days. Use the "Request" button. Also you can mark and then email or print records for multiple items to keep track of your research.

WorldCat - An important place to look for many materials not owned by the Tri-College Libraries. This combined library catalog contains more than 179 million records describing items owned by libraries around the world. Many of these items are available to you though interlibrary loan.

E-Z Borrow and Interlibrary Loan - Request items that are not available in Tripod on this page. Note that PALCI E-Z Borrow provides books in around 3 tdays. For books not in E-Z Borrow, request though Interlibrary Loan (ILL). It can take as little as 3 to 5 days for requests to arrive. For journal articles not in Tripod, request through Article Delivery.

Finding Journal Articles:

Journal articles and similar periodical publications provide scholarly information on specific aspects of political issues. Since articles are generally published on a shorter schedule than books, they can be more-up-to-date. The following indexes are the best ways to find journal articles for your topics.

Worldwide political science abstracts

Provider: CSA

Provides citations and abstracts of journals in political science and related fields including international relations, law, and public policy. Look for the article summaries on the individual title records.

Africa-wide

Provider: Ebsco

Offers access to multi-disciplinary information on Africa including books, journal articles, maps and music recordings. Some materials are in full-text. Covers 19th century-present.

Columbia International Affairs Online

Offers full-text journal articles, case studies, scholarly papers, non-governmental organization reports, and conference proceedings that focus on research in international affairs. Covers 1991-present.

EconLit

Provider: CSA

Provides abstracts to economic journals, books, book reviews, dissertations, and working papers. Topics include economic theory and history, monetary theory, labor economics, international, regional and urban economics. Coverage 1969-present.

Eurislam

"This site is maintained by the Maison Interuniversitaire des Sciences de l'Homme in Alsace, France. It provides free access to a searchable database of references to books, journal articles, papers and reports relating to the lives of Muslims in contemporaryEurope." - Intute

Index Islamicus

Provider: CSA

Offers citations to literature on Islam, Muslims in various areas of the world including Africa and Europe. Includes citations to journal articles, conference proceedings, books, and book reviews from 1906 to present.

ProQuest Research Library

Provider: ProQuest

Provides citations and full-text magazine and journal articles in a wide variety of disciplines, both scholarly and popular in scope. Covers 1971-present.

Examples of Recent Journal Articles

Islam, Jihadism, and Depoliticization in France and Germany

Anouar Boukhars. International Political Science Review. Jun 2009. Vol. 30, Iss. 3; pg. 297-317. Request from BMC or Swarthmore through Article Delivery

ABSTRACT: Pressures from within (Islam) and without (globalization and European integration) have made Germans and the French feel apprehensive about their national identity and culture. Both countries are visibly struggling to defuse the potentially explosive mix of nationalism and fear of the Muslim "stranger," while defining citizenship for their marginalized and disenfranchised immigrants. The issue is no longer the building of "defensive citadels" of "Frenchness" or "Germanness," particularly since Germany has finally come to grips with the reality that the Gastarbeiter (guest workers) are there to stay. The challenge for Germany and France today is to define what kinds of values are essential for their countries' secular model of society and what kinds are negotiable.

Religion And Institutions: Federalism And The Management Of Conflicts Over Sharia In Nigeria Suberu, Rotimi T. Journal of International Development. May 2009 . Vol. 21 Iss. 4; pg. 547-560. Request through Article Delivery.

ABSTRACT: Conflicts over the status of Sharia Islamic law have dominated constitutional politics and ethno-religious relations in the Nigerian federation for decades. The adoption of stringent Sharia codes by 12 Muslim majority states in northern Nigeria, beginning with Zamfara in 1999, was particularly contentious, provoking broad concerns about the viability and survival of Nigeria's innovatively structured multi-ethnic federal system. But Sharia implementation and extension in Nigeria have followed a largely benign trajectory. The Nigerian federation's judicious combination of centrist and autonomy mechanisms has been remarkably effective in managing religious conflict and cauterising potentially disintegrative centrifugal challenges to national stability.

Religious Freedoms versus Gender Equality: Faith-Based Organizations, Muslim Minorities, and Islamic Headscarves in the New Europe

Kristen Ghodsee. Social Politics. Winter 2007. Vol. 14, Iss. 4; pg. 526

ABSTRACT: The intersections of gender and civil society in the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe have been examined primarily through the lens of Western Aid to support feminist nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). What has received less scholarly attention is the growing number of NGOs advocating for a return to more conservative gender roles and more restricted public roles for women. Many of these organizations are so-called "faith-based" organizations (FBOs), and are bound to particular religious denominations. In this article, I will examine the presence of Islamic FBOs in Bulgaria and how they mobilize a liberal "rights" discourse to justify practices that could be locally interpreted as being oppressive to women. Their insistence on guaranteeing women's "right to choose" certain religious practices puts feminists and women's NGOs in an increasingly difficult position.

What Type of Islamism for Europe? Islamism in Germany and the Netherlands Gonul Tol. Insight Turkey Vol. 11, Iss. 1; pg. 133-149. Request through Article Delivery.

Despite the general tendency within the literature on Islamism to label all Islamist associations as undemocratic due to a shared Islamic ethos, this article suggests that Islamist groups vary in ideology and methods from one another. They can become a counter-hegemonic force that threatens the democratic order or a potential force for democratization of the Islamic community. The role Islamist associations play in society is determined by the role of Islam within the Islamist discourse that is shaped by the social, economic and political structure within which Islamists operate. By comparing the dominant Turkish Islamist movement Milli Gorus in Germany with its Dutch counterpart based on data collected during field research between the years of 2004 and 2007, this article argues that European states ultimately determine the form Islamism takes within the European public space.

Using News and Commentary Sources:

The resources below were selected for reliability and currency. They include online versions of major newspapers published in Africa and Europe which reflect the viewpoints of people in the region rather than a U. S. interpretation of events.

World news connection

Contains hundreds of news items that are added daily from around the world. Material is obtained from open-source political speeches, television programs, radio broadcasts, newspaper articles, periodicals, and books. Content is translated into English. Useful for identifying government reactions to events in countries where the media are state-controlled.
To see news from a specific country, use the advanced search option. In the box labelled City/Source, enter the name of the country's capital. Add topic words for the headline or lead paragraph.

Africa research bulletin.

Holdings:
(Haverford College) Available from 1997-present.

Publisher: [Oxford] : Blackwell Publishers.

With its companion publication, Africa Research Bulletin Economic Series, the Political Series provides up-to-date analysis of events and issues. Because reports are issued monthly, recent concerns are treated more quickly.

Access world news

Provider: NewsBank

Newspaper collections from NewsBank provide full-text articles from the electronic editions of record for more than 700 newspapers around the globe.

BBC News - Africa

BBC News - Europe