The relationship between Islam and democracy has been subject to intense public debate since the early 1990s. The debate has focused primarily on Islam's alleged undemocratic characteristics: Is Islam compatible with democracy? More recently, a series of scholars have criticized the legitimacy of this question and suggested alternative formulations. This important book continues this trend in scholarship by posing the question in a productive way that recognizes the historical, institutional, and cultural nature of religious politics: under what conditions can Muslims make Islam and democracy compatible?

Asef Bayat offers a highly informative and stimulating discussion of sociopolitical and religious change in Egypt and Iran. He spent long years in both countries and provides personal observations and interviews that invigorate the narrative. His guiding research question is: “Why did the Iran of the late 1970s undertake an Islamic revolution, while the Egypt of the early 1980s, with more or less similar socioreligious settings, experienced only an Islamist movement?” (14).

Bayat develops an analytical framework employing Antonio Gramsci's concepts of frontal attack, war of position, and passive revolution. The Iranian Revolution, in which mass demonstrations overwhelmed the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was a classic case of frontal attack. In the absence of a strong Islamist movement on the ground, the new Islamic Republic of Iran engaged in a top-down project of social engineering. The emergence of a post-Islamist movement followed the crisis in Islamist ideology, socioeconomic developments, and changes in global politics. Post-Islamism revolved around municipal reform, youth and student activism, a women's movement, the emergence of religious intellectuals, and a coalition of political forces allied behind Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. Its strategy involved “mobilizing from below and negotiating from above” (113).

In contrast to the Iranian case, Islamists in Egypt failed in their attempt to overthrow the authoritarian regime. The crisis of frontal attack in Egypt reinforced a strategic shift. Islamist movements typically concentrate their energy on conquering civil society and establish societal hegemony. This war of position entailed an Islamization of society and led to the rise of a strong and pervasive Islamist movement by the early 1990s. Consequently, Egypt experienced Islamization despite the absence of an Islamic state.

The Iranian and Egyptian regimes both developed a strategy that aimed “to demobilize social actors by averting social movements by appropriating their aims” (195). This was, in essence, passive revolution. The Islamic Republic of Iran responded to the post-Islamist turn by repression and concessions in order to maintain clerical rule. While the post-Islamist movement left a lasting legacy by changing the parameters of political discourse, it ultimately was unsuccessful because it lacked an effective grassroots strategy that could mobilize people from all walks of life. President Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt also employed a multifaceted strategy that combined crackdown on Islamist movements, increased control of society, and co-optation of Islamist demands. While Egypt remained authoritarian, the state increasingly grew receptive to religious sensibilities. “The Islamist movement rendered the state more religious, more nationalist and nativist, and more repressive, since the liquidation of radical Islamists offered the opportunity to control other forms of dissent” (181).

The main analytical value of Bayat's comparative approach is the focus on the interaction between the state and social movements that often takes place alongside rapid socioeconomic change. This approach is clearly superior to explanations based on differences between political cultures (such as Sunni versus Shi'i Islam). Bayat offers a convincing account of how prevailing institutional and socioeconomic factors affect strategies and ideological goals of Islamic movements in Iran and Egypt.

The book would have been even stronger if Bayat had addressed two issues in greater detail. First, he does not clearly explain why Iran experienced a post-Islamist turn while political thought in Egypt remained stagnant in the face of its own dogmatic Islamist movement. Bayat suggests that Iranian revolution was the crucial difference, giving birth to post-Islamism in Iran while “Egyptian Islamists aspired to what Iranian post-Islamists were struggling to leave behind” (192). Although this argument is plausible, it leaves a number of questions unanswered. Is the existence of an Islamic state a precondition for the rise of post-Islamist movements? How can we explain the emergence of post-Islamist movements in places like Turkey that did not experience Islamic revolutions?

Second, Bayat's definition and discussion of post-Islamism require elaboration. He argues that post-Islamism emerged after Islamism had exhausted itself and experienced a metamorphosis. “[Post-Islamism] is an endeavor to fuse religiosity and rights, faith and freedom, Islam and liberty.… It strives to marry Islam with individual choice and freedom, with democracy and modernity” (11). While it is true that post-Islamism represented a significant step toward democratic renaissance in the Muslim world, it has an ambivalent and tense relationship with liberalism. Post-Islamism as a project has yet to recognize fully the rights of non-Muslims, non-pious Muslims, dissidents, and vulnerable groups such as women. As Bayat observes, the notion of “religious democracy” suggested by religious intellectuals in Iran itself remains an underdeveloped and ambiguous concept. It seems that the greatest challenge for post-Islamism today is defining how it differs from liberal democracy without deteriorating into a tyranny of the religious majority that sacrifices individual liberties.