Islampolitik: The Role of Islam in Modern-State Building examines the interrelationship between Islam and state-building in global modernity. Synthesizing scholarship from the fields of sociology, political science, history, religious studies, Middle East, and Islamic studies, this book brings together theories from both below (subjectivities) and above (governance) into one comprehensive resource.

Islampolitik investigates how modern states draw on religion, specifically Islam, when creating templates for subjectivity formation of individuals and communities as part of their broader governance strategies. The book provides a needed challenge to the long-held perception amongst scholars of governance and modernity: namely that Islam is a source of pre-modern rationales creating obstacles to modern governance and state maintenance processes. The book provides empirical insights into the connection between global modernity and modern frames for identity construction.

Dr. Stephan Stetter is professor in International Politics and Conflict Studies at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich and a Visiting Professor (2024/25) at the University of Bologna. His work focuses on politics, conflicts and society in the Middle East as well as an theories of global modernity from sociological and historical angles. He has published widely on these topics in leading journals and with leading book publishers, including several monographs and edited volumes with Palgrave and Springer.

Dr. Kirstine Sinclair is Special Consultant at the National Centre against Honour-based Violence under the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration.  Her academic work has focused on religious and political aspects of Muslim minority identity in the West, and she has worked on projects relating to political Islam, institution building, and modern Muslim subjectivity formation. She has published on these topics in in both English and Danish. 

Dr. Morten Valbjørn is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University, Aarhus,  Denmark. In addition to the International Relations Theory/Middle East studies nexus and (the study of) international relations in an (un)exceptional Middle East, his work focuses on Shia/Sunni sectarianism and the transformations of Islamism. In recent years, he has directed the international research projects ‘TOI: Bringing in the Other Islamists’ and ‘SWAR: Sectarianism in the Wake of the Arab Revolts’. His research has been published widely in Middle East specific and leading political science/IR journals.