These two collections can (and should) be profitably read together. Many aspects of Iran's June 2009 “Green Revolution” and this year's “Arab Spring” were anticipated in the research in Being Young and Muslim. A number of studies in Islam and Democratization in Asia respond to aftermath of similar (sometimes failed) democratizing efforts in the Islamic World. It is not that the recent history of Indonesia, to take an example, provides a window on the future of Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution; rather, it provides a short, sobering list of probable futures. There are some areas of geographical and thematic overlap between the collections as well. The experience of Muslim minorities in Europe in Being Young and Muslim makes for interesting reading alongside analyses of the Muslim experience as minorities in India and China in Islam and Democratization in Asia. That said, the collections generally offer different approaches to their subjects and merit separate discussion.

Islam and Democratization in Asia emerged from a 2008 workshop of the same name held at the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville. Many of the participants have careers in diplomacy, policy, and politics in addition to their academic interests. Their collective concern with regional security and diplomacy provides coherence to this collection, but also limits its analytical horizons. The collection is divided into four parts: “Theories of the Relations Between Islam and Democratization,” followed by sections devoted to South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia, respectively. The most compelling chapter in the first section is “Islam and Democracy: An Examination of Liberal Muslim's Political Culture,” by Moataz Fattah. Fattah' s study relies on surveys of educated elites to assess the intellectual support for “Democratic software”—democratic values and norms—and “Democratic hardware”—institutions and processes (p. 32). Based on this analysis, Muslims in the United States, Egypt, Turkey, India, Iran, and Tunisia score among the most “democratizable” Muslim societies. On the other end of the spectrum are countries like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libya, Pakistan, and Nigeria. However, this analysis is based on survey data collected in 2002. At first glance, its conclusions would appear to be quite wrong with respect to current events in Libya and Yemen. But, Fattah's analysis is quite nuanced. For example, Libyan respondents scored high in “democratic software” but not “democratic hardware,” thus suggesting some democratizing potential for Libyans nearly a decade ago. Current events remind us that whatever intellectual attitudes prevail regarding democracy, the process of change depends on the relative strength of the state and economic factors. Another important finding in Fattah's study is that progressive and traditional (that is, nondemocratic) political ideas are espoused by both Islamist and secularist elites (p. 57). This is a reminder of the perils of attaching too comprehensive a worldview to an abstract and monolithic “Islam” (or other ideology for that matter). This general point is examined in a case study of Bangladesh by Tariq Karim. Nonetheless, Karim concludes on a wary note about the possible of “Talibanization” of Bangladeshi society leading to the radicalization of Muslim populations elsewhere in the region, notably in India (p. 157).

Omar Khalidi's contribution also warns that conditions may be ripe for the radicalization of Indian Muslims due to systematic official marginalization and irregular pogroms suffered by both Muslims and Sikhs since 1947. He recommends more proportional representation of these groups in elective bodies and also better integration and promotion of minorities in all branches of government as a possible cure for the grim history he outlines (pp. 180–183). Two close observers of those countries—neither of whom ascribes this fragility to Islamist ideology per se—also note the precariousness of democracy in Indonesia and Malaysia. Rather, in the case of Indonesia, Feliz Heiduk argues that democracy is imperiled by the “oligarchic character of Indonesia's ‘democracy’” (p. 211). Naveed Shaikh documents the plasticity of Islamist ideology in reaction to concrete political realities in Malaysia in recent decades and demurs on predicting a trend. None of these analyses escape the implicit concern for “regional stability” with regard to democracy and Islam in Asia. This is most apparent in Brian Glyn William's contribution on suicide bombers in Afghanistan (and the extent to which this behavior was imported from Iraq).

Bayat and Herrera's collection, Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North, is overwhelmingly driven by ethnographic research. Nearly every study exemplifies the editors' ethos that “research in the area of youth necessitates not only research about the young, but collaboration and initiatives with the young” (p. 363). Three of the chapters in the collection are reprints from journals and all contributions seem to have had their origins in two “Making of the Muslim Youth” conferences sponsored by the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) and the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS) in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Indeed, the editors position the collection as something of an antidote to the tendency of conceptualizing youth around the world (and certainly Muslim youth) as “a paradox, a problem, and an opportunity” (p. 355). In this view, something about the global “youth bulge” needs to be redirected or defused or managed. Analyses of Muslim youth as alienated victims of globalization poised to be radicalized have been proven problematic in the “Arab Spring” of 2011 with protestors making a point of championing democracy and liberalism rather than “Talibanism.” Thus, at this moment, the open-ended and sympathetic mode of inquiry championed by these researchers can claim some validation. The collection is organized under five compelling themes: “Politics of Dissent,” “Livelihoods and Lifestyles,” “Strivings for Citizenship,” “Navigating Identities,” and “Musical Politics.”

As might be expected with such pure (as opposed to applied) research agendas, the contributors to this volume do not always connect the quite particular information they have gathered through observation or interviews to a robust theoretical framework. That is all to the good, because it reinforces the point that only close study of particular times and places in the “Islamic World” or “Middle East” will yield convincing evidence of the diversity of reactions to the challenges of modern globalization. From Pierre Hecker's analysis of the heavy metal scene in Istanbul (pp. 325–340) to al-Otaibi and Ménoret's discussion of the “car-skidders” of Saudi Arabia (pp. 77–94), challenging complexities emerge for students of the Islamic World and the Middle East. None of the responses to globalization (both its empowering and alienating effects) recorded in this volume can be properly termed “Islamic” in the sense of proceeding from a consistent doctrine or ideology; nor does as a “universal” response of Muslim youth come into view. Yet, these studies do record shared experience of Muslim youth as they struggled to find a meaningful identity through which they might express dissent, or belonging (as in Miriam Gazaah's interesting chapter on “Maroc-Hop” in the Netherlands or Andre Mazawi's chapter on Muslim Youth in France), or simple cope with the challenges of daily life (Herrera's chapter on jobless youth in Egypt and Fatemeh Sadeghi's chapter on women and sexuality in Iran stand out in this regard).