Lawrence Rubin, ‘Islam in the Balance: Ideational Threats in Arab Politics’

Abstract

This book ‘Islam in the Balance: Ideational Threats in Arab Politics’ is written by Lawrence Rubin and published by Stanford Security Studies in 2014. The author is an assistant professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. His research interests include comparative Middle East politics and international security with a specific focus on Islam politics and Arab foreign policies. The book, which contains 189 pages, is an analysis of how and why ideas, or political ideology, can impose a more serious threat to states’ national security than shifts in the military balance of power. Further, it analyses how states respond to non-military, ideational threats. More specifically, it examines the threat perception and policy responses of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to the rise and activities of two “Islamic states,” Iran and Sudan. The author makes two important assumption; First, ideology, or ideational power, triggers threat perception and affects state policy because it can undermine domestic political stability and regime survival in other states. The sociopolitical logic of this external political threat is that the projection of domestic ideology through culturally resonant symbols could alter commonly held beliefs about the targeted regime’s legitimacy and facilitate social unrest. Second, states engage in ideational balancing in response to an ideological threat. This non-military response aims to mitigate an ideational threat’s political-symbolic power through resource mobilization and counter framing. Consisting of domestic and foreign policies, this state behavior aims to bolster commonly held beliefs about its own legitimacy and seeks to undermine the credibility of the source of the ideational threat. However, Rubin is not saying that a change in ideological nature, inimical to another state, immediately leads to change in threat perception or policy. Threat perception does not increase when the ideological distance of the elites increases. Instead, this book argues that the ideas and symbols that express the projected ideological threat must resonate with a foreign domestic audience. Targeted regimes fear this foreign ideational projection more during periods of societal unrest. The potential for the resonance of symbols and ideas is heightened during periods of societal crisis in which the legitimacy of the ruling order is under strain and scrutiny. What makes this research one of a high significance is the fact that the vast majority of today’s Arab societies are subject to ideational threats imposed by different regional powers and groups, such as Iran, Turkey, al-Qaeda Network and the so called ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS). There is no doubt that such a book would be very useful for both the Arab readers and researchers.