Voyage en Haute-Égypte: Prêtres, coptes, et catholiques

Abstract

ism, and seeing in Islaman alternative viewof justice. However,Mazlumder has not been able to escape the paradox between opposing the state while displaying affinities with theAKP. Béatrice Hendrich closes this part with Chapter 11, on Şeyh Bedreddin, presenting the historical background of his revolt against the Ottoman Empire, and how his story is appropriated by various discourses on social justice in Turkey in modern times, including in leftist and Alevi narratives. Part IV, ‘Different Ways to Non-capitalism’, consists of three chapters. Chapter 12, by Hans Visser, addresses a rather unusual topic in research on Islamic economics, that of calls by small Islamist groups (the Murabitun movement in particular) to return to the use of gold and silver as currencies. After reading the text, one may wonder what the movement would think of the current flourishing development of cryptocurrencies in the world. Chapter 13, by Anthony T. Fiscella, presents the views of Isabelle Eberhardt’s, Muammar Qaddafi’s and Heba Raouf Ezzat’s ideas on Islamic socialism and anarchism. Finally, Michelangelo Guida’s Chapter 15 returns to Turkey, arguing that the conservative Turkish thinker Nurettin Topçu (d. 1979) and Necmettin Erbakan (d. 2011), the Islamist activist and Turkish politician, engineer and academic who was the prime minister of Turkey from 1996 to 1997, developed projects to combine Islamist ideas with capitalist modernization, despite their strong criticisms of Western modernity. The book covers a wide range of material from the Qur’an to recent developments of ‘Islamist capitalism’ in Turkey, and the reader may enjoy reading about all these Muslim ideas about economics. However, the book’s organization makes it difficult to persevere. For example, there is no reason why Turkish anti-capitalist groups should be discussed in different parts of the book, or why the modern Islamist discourses on social justice of Sharīʿatī and Qutḅ should also be dealt with in different sections parts of the book. Historical, geographical or thematic criteria could have been applied to better organize the chapters and content. A strong focus in the book is on Turkey, but the introduction gives no justification for this. Another shortcoming is perhaps the exclusive study of Islamic discourses, disregarding economic practices and experiences that can be found in various Muslim contexts concerning finance and halal, for example. That said, I recommend the book for social scientists, especially scholars and students carrying out research on the Middle East from a sociological, historical, anthropological or political perspective.