This cutting-edge analysis of Islamic politics and economics shows how Islam builds trust in communities and serves as a collective identity.

In much of the Muslim world, Islamic political and economic movements appear to have a comparative advantage. Relative to similar secular groups, they are better able to mobilize supporters and sustain their cooperation long-term. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Turkey, a historically secular country that has experienced a sharp rise in Islamic-based political and economic activity. Drawing on rich data sources and econometric methods, Avital Livny challenges existing explanations - such as personal faith - for the success of these movements. Instead, Livny shows that the Islamic advantage is rooted in feelings of trust among individuals with a shared, religious group-identity. This group-based trust serves as an effective substitute for more generalized feelings of interpersonal trust, which are largely absent in many Muslim-plurality countries. The book presents a new argument for conceptualizing religion as both a personal belief system and collective identity.

Across the Muslim world, successful mobilization efforts -- both political and economic -- are increasingly Islamic-based. No where is this phenomenon more apparent than in Turkey, a historically secular country that has witnessed a recent rise in Islamic-based politics and economics. Whether galvanizing mass street demonstrations, campaigning on behalf of a political party, or encouraging particular patterns of trade and investment, calls to collective action that rely on religious language or symbols are proving more successful than similar but secular ones. As a result, where other political parties have faltered in the face of electoral instability, Islamic-based parties are enjoying repeated successes; Islamic business associations and savings clubs are thriving in otherwise underdeveloped market settings; and Islamic charitable organizations are proving best able to provide public goods to the region's urban poor. The aim of this dissertation is to identify Islam's advantage in supporting collective mobilization, in Turkey and across the Muslim world. Although this advantage is often attributed to the deeply held religious beliefs of pious individuals, I combine personal observations and large datasets -- leveraging variation across individuals, across space, and across time -- to challenge this traditional view of Islamic activism as faith-based. Instead, I argue that Islamic mobilization is better described as trust-based: using econometric methods and a variety of data sources, I show that Islam's advantage rests on its ability to solve critical trust problems for the practice of collective politics and economics, in Turkey and a large number of Muslim-majority countries. The chapters of Part I of the dissertation seek to adjudicate between the two competing theories of Islamic mobilization. Chapter 1 offers a discussion and evaluation of the existing faith-based view: I define its empirical implications and then leverage variation in mobilization -- both political and economic -- across space, across time, and across individuals to test them. Ultimately, I find little support for the expectation that Islamic mobilization is faith-based: in terms of Islam's ability to mobilize the masses, indicators of personal piety are associated with significantly lower levels of political participation across individuals in eighteen Muslim-majority countries; cross-temporal increases in support for Islamic political parties in Turkey do not map onto similar trends in underlying piety; and cross-national patterns of Islamic banking are not associated with or religiosity or religious obstacles to conventional investment. If personal faith cannot explain Islam's advantage in political and economic mobilization, how are Islamic-based groups able to outpace their secular rivals? Chapter 2 presents an alternative, trust-based theory of Islamic mobilization by focusing on the collective aspects of mobilization and religion. I discuss the interdependence of individual decisions to become mobilized and reveal how uncertainty about others' participation threatens any would-be mobilization effort. The combination of interdependence and uncertainty make interpersonal trust a necessary foundation for mobilization. Where more generic, generalized feelings of trust are absent, I suggest that other forms of broad-based trust -- especially trust conditioned on shared group membership -- can serve as a near-perfect substitute. Using cross-national survey data from 140 countries, I reveal the absence of generalized trust in much of the Muslim world; and in data from eighteen Muslim-majority countries, I distinguish between personal religiosity, on the one hand, and a religious identity, on the other, capable of bolstering expectations of trust and trustworthiness among those who share it. In the empirical chapters of Part II, I present evidence of the importance of group-based trust in the success of Islamic-based movements, both political and economic, within Turkey as well as cross-nationally. Chapter 3 considers how Islam might address the trust problem in the case of mass political mobilization. Using the results of an original, nationally-representative survey from Turkey, as well as World Values Survey data from eighteen Muslim-majority countries, I illustrate the negative impact of generalized distrust on individuals' propensity to participate in mass politics. Further, I reveal a positive relationship between markers of religious identity and political participation, driven by an interaction effect of identity on trust and the propensity to participate. This has an unexpected impact on the ability of state repression to undermine Islamic-based political movements: by increasing the importance of trust for participation, repression also serves to increase the value of Islam as a foundation for mobilization. In Chapter 4, I turn my attention to explaining the success of Islamic-based political parties in Turkey and their potential for success elsewhere. Specifically, I seek to explain how a long history of coordination failure among voters was reversed with the success of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi). In panel data of electoral results beginning in the early 1970s, I reveal how low levels of interpersonal trust have made it difficult for voters in Turkey to coordinate on a winner, giving religious voters -- with their feelings of group-based trust -- an important coordination advantage. Further, I show how these voters' ability to consistently support Islamic-based parties over time has attracted the support of distrusting but secular voters, who would otherwise struggle to make their votes count, giving the AKP a significant advantage in distrusting, ill-coordinated electoral districts. To define the scope of Islam's economic advantage, in Chapter 5, I argue that feelings of trust among members of an Islamic-oriented business association are important in supporting long-term, flexible partnerships that mimic the benefits of vertical integration. This is particularly the case during periods of economic volatility, when future market conditions are uncertain and integration is most valuable. Using firm-level panel data from Turkey, I trace how members of the Independent Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (Müstakil Sanayici ve İşadamları Derneği) have fared during periods of volatility and compare this performance to similar but integrated firms, confirming that associational membership and integration are most important under conditions of uncertainty. Finally, in the chapters of Part III, I consider the source(s) of generalized distrust in the Muslim world. In Chapter 6, I explore a number of existing explanations -- social distance, social contact, economic development, political institutions; religion; and culture -- and find that none are able to account for the trust deficit in Muslim-majority countries. When I consider whether low levels of trust in the region are rational, reflecting the fact that most people really cannot be trusted, I find the exact opposite: levels of honesty in Muslim-majority countries tend to be robust, revealing a mismatch between levels of trust, on the one hand, and levels of trustworthiness, on the other. In Chapter 7, I suggest that this mismatch points to an information problem underlying the low levels of trust in the Muslim world. Using data from 128 countries, I illustrate how state institutions that often help to inform citizens about who should be trusted, when too intrusive, undermine this same process. The abundance of such institutions across the Muslim world finally serves to explain why trust is so limited in the region.

What would happen if Christians and a Muslim at a university talked and disagreed, but really tried to understand each other? What would they learn? That is the intriguing question Peter Kreeft seeks to answer in these imaginative conversations at Boston College. An articulate and engaging Muslim student named 'Isa challenges the Christian students and professors he meets on issues ranging from prayer and worship to evolution and abortion, from war and politics to the nature of spiritual struggle and spiritual submission.

A Muslim environmentalist explores the fascinating intersection of environmentalism and Islam. Muslims are compelled by their religion to praise the Creator and to care for their community. But what is not widely known is that there are deep and long-standing connections between Islamic teachings and environmentalism. In this groundbreaking book, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin draws on research, scripture, and interviews with Muslim Americans to trace Islam’s preoccupation with humankind’s collective role as stewards of the Earth. Abdul-Matin points out that the Prophet Muhammad declared “the Earth is a mosque.” Using the concept of Deen, which means “path” or “way” in Arabic, Abdul-Matin offers dozens of examples of how Muslims can follow, and already are following, a Green Deen in four areas: “waste, watts (energy), water, and food.”

Islamic Globalization examines the Muslim world''s growing importance in creating a more inclusive international system that is increasingly multipolar and multicultural. The author describes an emerging pattern of Islamic globalization as a series of transformations in four interrelated areas OCo pilgrimage and religious travel, capitalism and Islamic finance, democracy and Islamic modernism, and diplomacy and great power politics. The book integrates the disciplines of religion, politics, economics, law, and international relations highlighting developments in the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa. It provides new insights into the rapidly growing ties between China and the Islamic world, exploring their likely impact on the balance of power in Eurasia and beyond.

In an axial volume from his celebrated compendium, the "Ihya ulum al din," al-Ghazali shares his startling and original exploration of the meaning of trust in Divine Providence and recommends specific spiritual skills to help the seeker develop a state whereby he or she may rightly respond to events as they happen. This judicious use of stories is intended to imitate the Sufi practice of the master/disciple relationship, where the novice is helped to discern correct action.

In light of recent concern over Shari’ah, such as proposed laws to prohibit it in the United States and conflict over the role it should play in the new Egyptian constitution, many people are confused about the meaning of Shari‘ah in Islam and its role in the world today. In Reasoning with God, renowned Islamic scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl explains not only what Shari‘ah really means, but also the way it can revitalize and reengage contemporary Islam. After a prologue that provides an essential overview of Shari‘ah, Abou El Fadl explores the moral trajectory of Islam in today’s world. Weaving powerful personal stories with broader global examples, he shows the ways that some interpretations of Islam today have undermined its potential in peace and love. Rather than simply outlining challenges, however, the author provides constructive suggestions about how Muslims can reengage the ethical tradition of their faith through Shari‘ah. As the world’s second largest religion, Islam remains an important force on the global stage. Reasoning with God takes readers—both Muslim and non-Muslim—beyond superficial understandings of Shari‘ah to a deeper understanding of its meaning and potential.

The rise of militant jihadist groups is one of the greatest international security crises in the world today. In civil wars across the modern Muslim world, Islamist groups have emerged out of the ashes, surged dramatically to power, and routed their rivals on the battlefield.

There is significant evidence that an effective organizational culture provides a major competitive edge—higher levels of employee and customer engagement and loyalty translate into higher growth and profits. Many business leaders know this, yet few are doing much to improve their organizations’ cultures. They are discouraged by misguided beliefs that an executive’s tenure and an organization’s attention span are too short for meaningful transformation. James Heskett provides a roadmap for achievable and fast-paced culture change. He demonstrates that an effective culture supplies the trust that makes managing change of all kinds easier. It provides a foundation on which changes in strategy can be based, and it’s a competitive edge that can’t easily be hacked or copied. Examining leading companies around the world, Heskett details how organizational culture makes employees more loyal, more productive, and more creative. He discusses how to quantify its effects in order to sell the notion of culture change to the organization and considers how to preserve an organization’s culture in the face of the trend toward remote work hastened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Showing how leadership can bring about significant changes in a surprisingly short time span, Win from Within offers a playbook for developing and deploying culture that enables outsized results. It is a groundbreaking demonstration of organizational culture’s role as a foundation for strategic success—and its measurable impact on the bottom line.