Prof. Greg Barton: Islam, Politics and the Future of the Muslim World

On this day Muslims around the world will be celebrating the birth of the Prophet Muhammad.  Nothing is more important to understanding Islam than understanding what Muslims believe about the character of the Prophet.  Few in the West realise that the attributes and values that Christians associate with Jesus are precisely those that Muslims prize in Muhammad.  This is why Islam is understood to be a religion of peace and of justice. And yet the image of Islam that dominates our awareness seems overwhelmed by a media focus on political unrest, oppression and militant violence.  But there is more to it than that.  For one thing, it is partly a product of scale: around one in five people alive today live in the band of Muslim majority societies from Dakar to Jayapura, Mogadishu to Astana. By any measure, though, the Muslim world has its share of strife.  This presentation will attempt to make sense of the social and political troubles currently facing Muslim societies and to understand the drivers behind Islamic movements.  It will examine the competing claims for political reform in non-democratic Muslim countries such as Tunisia and Egypt and the links between democracy and Islam in successful democracies such as Turkey and Indonesia.  It will also review developments in jihadi terrorism and extremism and the challenges that these represent to Muslims and non-Muslims.  Finally it will sketch likely scenarios for political and social change in Muslim society, developments in Islamic thought and social movements and in relations between 'Islam and the West'. Dr Greg Barton is the Herb Feith Research Professor for the Study of Indonesia in the Faculty of Arts at Monash.  He is based in the politics stream in the School of Political and Social Inquiry.  He is acting director of the Centre for Islam and the Modern World (www.arts.monash.edu.au/politics/cimow), deputy UNESCO chair in interreligious and intercultural relations – Asia Pacific, and is active in the Global Terrorism Research Centre.   For the past 20 years Prof. Barton has been active in inter-faith dialogue initiatives and has a deep commitment to building understanding of Islam and Muslim society.  The axis of his research interests is the way in which religious thought, individual believers and religious communities respond to modernity and to the modern nation state.  He also has a strong general interest in comparative international politics.