Hamas in Politics: Democracy, Religion, Violence

Jeroen Gunning

Paper, 320 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-70045-0
$26.50

March, 2008
Cloth, 320 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-70044-3
$34.50

"An ambitious and impressive piece of work. The interviews and Jeroen Gunning's interpretations will make a valuable contribution to scholarship on Islamist movements, terrorism, and Hamas." — Jan Selby, author of Water, Power, and Politics in the Middle East: The Other Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

"This thoughtful and necessary book deserves a wide readership." — David Gallagher, Times Literary Supplement

"an exemplary political primer on the Islamist party's evolution, structure, and thought." — New York Review of Books

"Based on Jeroen Gunning's theoretical acuity, prolonged field work, and interviews conducted with Hamas cadres in the Gaza Strip, this in-depth analysis offers rich and multidimensional insights into Hamas. The result is an eye-opening study that transcends conventional or simplistic explanations and gets inside the movement and its authority structures." — Menachem Klein, Bar Ilan University, and author of A Possible Peace Between Israel and Palestine

"Blending a consideration of Hamas's political theory with its conduct, informed by conceptual prisms from several disciplines but avoiding jargon, Hamas in Politics provides a reliable and discerning guide to one of the most important actors in contemporary Middle Eastern politics." — James Piscatori, Wadham College, University of Oxford, and coauthor of Muslim Politics

"Original, unique, and penetrating. Strongly grounded in political theory, drawing on impressive and extensive fieldwork, and grounded in documentary research, Jeroen Gunning's insightful and objective analysis is neither apologetic not prejudiced. The author spent prolonged periods living in the Gaza Strip, which has enabled him to capture masterfully the sociopolitical and religiocultural reality of Hamas, a reality that renders as a travesty the politically motivated and reductionist view of the group as merely a 'terrorist movement.'" — Khaled Hroub, University of Cambridge, and author of Hamas: A Beginner's Guide

Related Subjects

• Middle East Studies

About the Author

Jeroen Gunning studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies and at Durham University and the University of Oxford, and is now lecturer in the Department of International Politics, the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

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