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Includes all relevant information on representative political institutions and elections held in Qatar. It summarizes Qatari political history and development and outlines the evolution of electoral provisions for a Shura and Municipal Councils (suffrage, elected institutions, nomination of candidates, electoral system).

Includes all relevant information on representative political institutions and elections held in Oman. It summarizes Omani political history and development and outlines the evolution of electoral provisions for a Shura and later State Council (suffrage, elected institutions, nomination of candidates, electoral system, organizational context of elections).

This chapter looks at the genesis of the Islamist agenda in Malaysia from the perspective of both Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) and the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). Using the history of the Islamist opposition PAS and UMNO’s concomitant early responses to its rise as a lens through which to perceive the early tenor of Islamism in the Malaysian context, the chapter demonstrates how the party underwent several metamorphoses as it evolved to locate Islamism at the heart of its social-political agenda.

In prison from 1980–84 Ghannouchi translates a number of works and writes some of his own on a number of topics including democracy, women's rights, and Palestine.

He is influenced by Malik Bennabi, whose treatise “Islam and Democracy” inspires him to lay the foundations for his own masterpiece Al‐Hurriyat al‐’Ammah (Public Liberties).

In this book, Ghannouchi attempts to address issues of great interest to modern activists and thinkers in the Muslim world and of direct relevance to the debate on the role Islam plays in the lives of Muslims in the modern world.

Freedom, citizenship rights, riddah (apostasy), democracy's Islamic roots, the foundations of an Islamic democracy, and such concepts as Islamic state, vicegerency, and shura are some of the topics addressed.

In this chapter the author examines the successful implementation of balanced counterinsurgency strategy in northeastern Afghanistan though the lens of his experience. The author defines a balanced counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy as the appropriate level of effort applied to killing and capturing the enemy, versus partnering with and protecting the Afghan population, and enabling the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to operate independently. The weighting of this effort is determined by the unique local conditions of each area of operation to include such variables as; insurgent’s force, enemy’s disposition and composition, effectiveness of ANSF. The author concludes that only after we carefully analyze, study, and understand the nature of the conflict and the human environment of the area of operation, can we select the right approach to success.

There is little debate concerning the impact culture has on conflict, especially in the form of insurgency and counterinsurgency. Recent history would suggest that the success of a country intending to invade and occupy another is in large part dependent on its knowledge and sensitivity to the relevant cultural processes and dynamics. Much of the cultural training given to deploying forces focuses primarily customs and courtesies, even though truly understanding a culture consists of much more. With that, U.S. and Collation forces have faced successive failures. Research on culture and conflict must be increasingly incorporated in to allied and coalition military operations. Scholarly works encompassed in this text significantly contribute to our knowledge of the cultural dimensions of counterinsurgency, strategies for effectively resolving them, and ultimately defining viable pathways for achieving peace.

The examination of wars and conflicts of the twenty-first century immediately draws one to the culture and sectarian dimensions of a conflict. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California convened cultural experts, anthropologists, government officials, and strategic analysts to discuss the impact culture has on both conflict behavior and counterinsurgency environments. A number of the study participants have agreed to share their ideas and insights on the nexus of culture, conflict, and counterinsurgency. The scholars reflect on the following fundamental questions; where and how is culture important in a national security and foreign policy context? Is cultural understanding important, or is it merely a fad? What constitutes cultural data? What frameworks should be used to analyze culture? What are the challenges of cultural data collection and application?

Historically, the rural population in modern Afghanistan has rejected large scale reforms attempted by a central government. Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other foreign fighters use the rural border region along the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) as a safe haven from which planning, training, and launches of attacks frequently occur. The initial structures established by the coalition that worked well through the first several years must evolve to a decentralize approach to counter insurgency. The reconstruction plan of Afghanistan should include dissembling provincial reconstruction teams in favor of a company level construct that focuses on distributing robust development assets at the district level. To set the conditions of success, we need to engage tribal leaders and establish a district-level security apparatus in which the district governor is the key leader elected by the shura.

This chapter elaborates on how the Ramadan offensive in 2010 destroyed trust in Al-Shabaab, and how Al-Shabaab took more than six months to ease down, and how the quality of Al-Shabaab institutions declined. Shabaab’s Shura council collapsed, its leaders did not trust each other, and the secret police, Amnijad, was disbanded. Al-Shabaab also lost the propaganda war over the drought in 2011, and more importantly, kidnappings spurred the Kenyans to intervene in Somalia in 2011, and Ethiopia subsequently intervened in 2012. Al-Shabaab lost battle after battle, and Godane’s leadership was questioned. AMISOM expanded, and a new Somali government came to power.

Funding to the Taliban started accruing in substantial amounts in 2005, mostly reaching the so-called Quetta Shura. This allowed it to emerge as the main center of Taliban power, and gradually start extending its influence over scattered groups of Taliban.

The Miran Shah Shura predated the Quetta Shura, but only in 2007 did it start to drift away and become more and more autonomous. The main grudge held against the Quetta Shura was the concentration of power in the hands of southern Taliban. The new Peshawar Shura, established in 2005, also opposed the southern bias of the Quetta Shura and sought to provide an alternative center of Taliban power in the east.

The US surge in southern Afghanistan in 2009-11 put the Quetta Shura under heavy stress, at a time when the Shuras of Miran Shah and Peshawar were trying to expand at its expense. The Quetta Shura started to appear as ineffective, and donors started redirecting their finances at the two other shuras. A period of decline had begun.

From 2014 the Quetta Shura started recovering influence among the Taliban, mostly due to its ability to re-direct funding away from other centers of power. Still the Quetta Shura remained divided internally, and unable to act coherently in order to exploit the opportunities that the withdrawal of western combat troops offered.

Chapter ten discusses Islamic politics and government. It examines how an Islamic state differs from modern nation-states and whether it is a theocracy. It discusses the caliphate and his duties and obligations. It examines Islamic law, shari’a, and the specific schools of legal interpretation, or fiqh. Qutb thought these schools divisive; he wanted them replaced by one comprehensive system. Yet legal change is complex, as demonstrated by the chapter’s short history of Egypt’s legal reforms, for what constitutes Islamic law is not always clear. Qutb’s approach to legal reform, called “dynamic law,” was built around the Qur’anic concepts of duties and beliefs, ‘ibadat and mu’amalat, but remained very conservative, as did his understanding of worshipping God (‘ubudiyya) and obeying earthly authority. Islamic punishments are discussed, since these were condemned strongly by the west, and the concept of shura, or consultation, which was said to demonstrate similarities to western democracy. Finally, Islamic political values are compared to western values – equality, freedom, social order, and morality.

This chapter discusses the rule of law during conflict, the formal and sociological views of law, counterinsurgency's rule of law, hybrid justice in Afghanistan, and policing during counterinsurgency. In a fight with the insurgents, the rule of law is a powerful tool to help regulate behavior, resolve disputes, and enable the creation or revision of social rules. The formal view defines law and social order by the laws on the books and the institutions of government. The sociological view looks at actual events in society, how people behave, and what people believe. The biggest challenge in facilitating the organic rule of law during counterinsurgency is navigating between formal and traditional methods of resolving disputes. In Afghanistan, the main challenge has been the tension between the state-run system of courts and the local and tribal systems of shore and jirga, councils of community leaders who mediate conflicts.