It is a pleasure to read three well-researched books that use a social movement approach to explain contemporary Islamic activism. A combination of rigorous fieldwork and focused use of theory offers an alternative viewing lens for a host of issues involving social work, women's activism, use of violence, recruitment strategies, protest movements, political participation, and economic reforms.

With meticulous attention to detail, Janine Clark examines three case studies in Islam, Charity, and Activism: charitable medical clinics in Cairo, the Islamic Center Charity Society and its commercial institutions (e.g., hospitals, private schools) in Jordan, and the Women's Sector of the Islah Charitable Society in Yemen. The result of a ten-year effort (1991–2002), her research methodology is explained with honesty and precision. In the process, a range of interesting issues are voiced. For instance, many secular clinics adopt Islamic names in order to gain greater “credibility and legitimacy” (p. xii); another is the fact that the author had easier access to male interviewees, particularly in a restricted Yemeni society, because Western women are considered “a third sex—one that is unbound by many of the social customs” (p. xii).

Clark's systematic study calls into question some of the basic assumptions about the role of Islamic social institutions (ISIs). While other scholars state that ISIs are arenas of political activity where middle-class professionals recruit and mobilize the poor into the Islamic movement, Clark argues the opposite. The book shows that due to strategic and operational reasons, the ISIs do not promote cross-class alliances. Using ideas of vertical and horizontal ties from the social movement literature, the study argues that ISIs develop and strengthen horizontal ties and benefit the middle class. They owe their existence to their ability to attract middle-class volunteers, employees, donors, and government contacts. Overlapping “networks between the home, mosque, workplace, other ISIs, clubs, and even friends living abroad” (p. 34) nurture and maintain homogenous social relations. In Cairo, for example, the best Islamic clinics are located in middle-class neighborhoods, and the ones in poor sections suffer both in terms of quality and quantity of services. While vertical ties to the poor do exist, and the ISI services do benefit the poor, it is the middle class that benefits most. The poor cannot afford school and commercial services offered by the ISIs, and informal gatherings (e.g., the Quranic study groups) generally exclude the poor, becoming vehicles of middle-class socializing and networking. The poor reach out for help wherever they can find it, regardless of ideological persuasion, including services offered by nonreligious and nongovernmental organizations. Clark's thoughtful study is an important contribution to the study of Islamic activism.

Mohammed Hafez admits that the title of his book, Why Muslims Rebel, is meant to echo Ted Gurr's Why Men Rebel (1970), but its main purpose is to challenge the leading explanations (including Gurr's) as to the causes for violent actions in the Muslim world. The author rejects the prevailing general arguments that economic deprivation caused by failed modernization, impoverishment, and/or psychological alienation due to excessive westernization has led to Muslim rebellions. While psychological and socioeconomic factors may help in the understanding of Islamists' existence, they cannot explain rebellion. Instead, Hafez favors focusing on the political process with three strategies derived from the social movement approach: political environment, mobilization structures, and ideological frames. Institutional exclusion blocks channels for political participation and conflict resolution and, when combined with reactive and indiscriminate repression, leads to large-scale rebellion. Islamist movements adapt by forming exclusive mobilizing structures that intensify their loyalty to the members and shield them from state repression. Rebellion gives rise to loosely structured factions that either oppose each other or compete: “Like a shattered vase, it is not easy to put together an Islamist consensus around peace and reconciliation once the movement has been fragmented into numerous exclusive factions” (p. 144).

The strongest segment in the book is the discussion on the nature of ideological frames (Chapter 5). Here, the author utilizes a combination of arguments (including psychological) to explain violence against civilian targets. Antisystem frames become all-encompassing and polarizing; moral codes against killing are deactivated and inhibitions are removed. Ethical arguments, comparative justifications, and shifting the blame for violence to the victims sanction murderous acts, and violence is viewed as necessary for the good of the people. Here, ideological intransigences “solidify into collective identities” (p. 161) and reject any attempts at reconciliation, even when popular support has been lost.

Hafez's attempt to show the dynamics of the political process and his use of social movement theory (and other approaches) are thought provoking and offer the reader an alternative view of Islamic radicals' use of violence. His central argument is an important one and deserves serious attention. The author admits in several places that due to time and resource restrictions, he had to focus on two countries, Algeria and Egypt, both entrenched in violent Islamic movements. His desire to show the relevance of the framework to Islamic movements in other parts of the world and draw on comparisons leads him to a brief mention of Jordan, Tunisia, Pakistan, Kashmir, the southern Philippines, Chechnya, Tajikistan, and the Al-Qaeda.

While both the “ambition” (p. 204) and the intellectual desire to expand is understandable, it can also be distracting. Since the coverage is uneven, it causes crowding and tends to generate questions about the relationship between the framework and the unique features of the case. For instance, in the early discussion about state repression and political exclusion, after detailed cases of Algeria and Egypt, the reader is taken into a tour de force of Jordan, Pakistan, and Tunisia concerning possible variations on inclusion and exclusion. Jordan is praised by the author as having adopted inclusive policies regarding Islamists while maintaining control over mosques, associations, and charity groups, thereby developing a successful “carrot-and-stick” approach. The legality of Islamist groups was not curtailed, but electoral and legal manipulations limited their influence. The focus is on state strategy, yet one inevitably asks, what may have been the role of ruler legitimacy? To what extent did King Hussein's popularity (combined with strategy) impose limitations on violent groups? Similar questions arise for all of the briefly covered comparative cases. It is important to leave room to expand on unique features (e.g., political culture) as intervening variables enriching comparative studies. Hafez's rich framework and in-depth knowledge may have been better served by two books, one with comparative focus on Egypt and Algeria alone, and another a comparative study of different Islamist groups in different countries without concern for time constraints or resource and space limitations.

Islamic Activism, the volume edited by Quintan Wiktorowicz, has two general goals: the exploration of the dynamics, processes, and organizations of Islamic movements (variations on mobilization strategies, structural changes, etc.) and an attempt to test the explanatory power of the social movement approaches. Charles Kurzman's clever review of the social movement and Islamic studies provides helpful insights. Violence and contention, networks and alliances, and culture and framing make up the three parts of this valuable book. Part I focuses on case studies of Algeria, Egypt, Bahrain, and Hamas. Fred Lawson's informative overview of the 1994–98 Shi'i uprising on the island of Bahrain shows that both the government and the opposition continued to change tactics. New groups were progressively added (women, small shopkeepers, students, etc.), and the movement turned violent in late 1995. The phases of government response began with diffuse, soft, and repressive strategies that became more forceful, moving to selective brutality by forces loyal to the regime and ending with softer and more tolerant tactics isolating those on the fringes of the political spectrum. Hafez argues in previous writings that state repression and brutality increase or trigger violence by the activists. In the case of Bahrain, we have two phases of forceful government response, and it begs the question: Is selective brutality better because it diminishes public support and limits participation in the demonstrations?

Political opportunity structure, mobilizing structures, and cultural framing are offered in an attempt to explain Hamas as a social movement. In an interesting piece, Glenn Robinson shows how changes in the external environment led to specific changes in the available opportunities for Hamas. Mobilization was facilitated through mosques and social service institutions, as well as universities. Here, the implication is that the mobilizing structure of these welfare organizations has been political, not merely charity based, as Justine Clark states with her case studies of social work agencies. The cultural frame is simply a broader discussion of ideology, where Hamas sees Palestine as a religious endowment and Islam as a solution, and engages in anti-Jewish propaganda.

In Part II, Diane Singerman helps us think about the overall interrelatedness of the repression of conventional forms of political expression in the modern Middle East and the rise of informal networks as alternative venues of expression. In the midst of these complex and vague networks, collective identities are forged domestically and regionally. Benjamin Smith successfully reflects on the elusive and complex role of the bazaar as a collective protest movement. The bazaar responds to the economic policies of the state, and its members can separate religion from politics when dealing with Islamic theocracy. His conclusions reminded me of a shopping spree in Tehran's “black” bazaar for an Islamic headcover that was hard to find. The experience revealed everything one needs to know about the separation of religious precepts, politics, and economic interests. The Iranian bazaar (with variations across cities) remains a fascinating and unexplored phenomena. Jillian Schwedler's analysis aptly shows how the formally institutionalized Islah party in Yemen declined as a broader field of alliances changed the landscape of political opportunities. Separating regime-movement alliances from personal alliances among a broad range of elite helps us see how a strong religious-based party may be weakened.

Part III, and the last section, explores the culture and framing of Islamic activism. Carrie Rosefsky Wickham skillfully explores recruitment and outreach strategies among high school and university graduates in three urban lower-middle-class neighborhoods of Cairo. Initially, interests motivate the students as they get involved in low-risk activities in neighborhood mosques or Islamic student associations. The progression to riskier Islamic activism highlights the importance of ideas and how activism is framed as a “moral obligation” demanding student loyalty and self-sacrifice. Although “on the plane of ideas” is where the Islamists achieve “their greatest success” (p. 247), the individual student's experiences and values play a major role in leading them to riskier activism. Gwenn Okruhlik's work, like Wickham's, challenges our views of the political role of Islamists. The impact of the Islamist social movement on the government of Saudi Arabia has been a more open discussion, the introduction of reform facilitating a convergence of cultural frames with the potential that, in the future, the Islamic frame may turn into a nationalist one. M. Hakan Yavuz's timely study combines cultural contention, political opportunity structure, and economic reform in a discussion of the state of the Islamist movement in Turkey. Yavuz concludes that while economic liberalization has created greater opportunities for the construction of a new Muslim identity, it has not promoted unification resulting in proliferation of competing Islamic projects.

All three books cover divergent forms of Islamic activism in a variety of countries. They show us the following: 1) Ideology is an integral part of the study of Islamist activism. All the contributors engage ideology in one way or another, and while it may be true that at times interpersonal “bonds come first and then ideology” (Clark, p. 25), ideology remains a multifaceted phenomenon. The social movement approach helps us delve into the anatomy of ideology. 2) Either as a movement or as part of the political structure, Islamist groups are susceptible to change. 3) Social movement approaches are highly adaptive to a diversity of cases. Their fluidity can perhaps help us gain insight into the present (and often ignored) secular movements in the Islamic countries. 4) It is important to remain open to the need to augment the social movement framework with other approaches for richer insight and analysis (e.g., state–society, ethnic politics).