Finding Funding
internal, external sources; funding news & opportunities

Conducting Research
regulations, policies, procedures, safety & security, facilities 

RESEARCH & OUTREACH
Intellectual property, Ag Experiment Station, Extension

Research Facts & News
newsletter, annual report, magazine

University Research Council
schedule, meeting notes, members

Useful LINKS
at MSU & elsewhere

Honorary Degrees

Make an appointment
with Vice President Gray

Research News

Research Features

Study sheds light on complexities of political Islam

Religion and politics are frequent, if often uncomfortable, bedfellows. Mohammed Ayoob, University Distinguished Professor of International Relations in James Madison College and the Department of Political Science, is particularly interested in political Islam, the intersection of politics and Islam in predominantly Muslim societies. That relationship has become a frequent topic of discussion throughout the world, he acknowledges, but too often those discussions are based on stereotypes, misperceptions, and incomplete knowledge of a very complex set of issues.

“People tend to think that Islam and political Islam are monolithic and universal in their manifestations,” Ayoob says. In fact, both are remarkably diverse. And that’s only one of the misperceptions he challenges in the book he’s completing this fall. Likely to be titled The Many Faces of Political Islam, it will be published by the University of Michigan press next fall.

The book challenges other commonly held views that create what Ayoob calls “a highly distorted overall perception” of the Muslim world. Among those misperceptions:

• Islam “precludes separation between religion and state” and requires politics in the Muslim world to be driven primarily by religious concerns
• Islamist political formations reject political compromise and coalition-building because they consider such courses of action to be incompatible with Islam
• Muslim countries cannot be democracies because “belief in God’s sovereignty precludes accepting the notion of popular sovereignty”
• “Political Islam is inherently violent” or at least “predisposes its followers to undertake unconstitutional and extra-legal activity to achieve their ‘divinely sanctioned’ objectives”

Drawing on historical research and his own decades of discussions with scholars, politicians, and journalists all over the Muslim world, Ayoob counters such views with the variety of religious practices and political systems in the Muslim world. It’s a much more diverse picture than portrayed in the popular literature in the West, he says.

Historically, he points out, political and religious spheres remained distinct during the classical age of Islam. “Where they intersected, it was politics that was in the driver’s seat, with temporal rulers often using religion for their ends.” This was true in the Ottoman Empire and, he says, to this day the state retains preeminence over Islamic religious establishments in Sunni countries like Turkey and Egypt.

The differences between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two self-proclaimed Islamic states, demonstrate the diversity of Muslim political systems: Saudi Arabia is a hereditary monarchy justified by the Wahhabi religious establishment; Iran is a republic created by overthrowing a hereditary monarchy because it was considered un-Islamic. Ayoob ticks off the historical circumstances that led other Muslim countries to their current, diverse political systems and notes that “even within the same country there are multiple expressions of political Islam.” Including democracy. Ayoob cites a seminal Islamist thinker who postulated that since people are God’s representatives on earth, political systems based on the will of the people are not necessarily contrary to Islamic teaching.

The small minority of extremists who employ violence do so more out of desperation than anything else, he says. They are on the fringes of political systems, where they have little long-term influence on Muslim societies. “Moreover, in some cases, groups that began as resistance movements have transmuted into political parties,” he says, citing Hizbullah and Hamas as examples. Democracy may be the best antidote for extreme Islamist groups, Ayoob says, because it allows free political expression and encourages pragmatism and compromise. “Turkey and Indonesia, among other cases, demonstrate the veracity of this assertion.” He urges the United States and its allies to “acknowledge even small, imperfect steps toward democracy wherever they occur, even if Islamist groups that come to power through the ballot box are not friendly to the United States.”

Ayoob speaks authoritatively about these many faces of political Islam because he has seen them and talked to their representatives and written numerous articles about Muslim societies around the world. His expertise makes him a sought-after analyst, most recently at the IslamExpo in London in July where he made two presentations.

His expertise also provided the core for MSU’s new Muslim Studies Initiative. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, then-Provost Lou Anna Simon, with relevant deans and senior faculty, decided to augment the study of Muslim societies and polities at MSU. The result: a Muslim Studies undergraduate specialization and a Muslim Studies Program. The program focuses on “the lived experiences of Muslims around the world,” Ayoob says, “rather than only on scriptural texts and abstract philosophy divorced from context. It puts the study of Islam in its broader historical, geographic, and cultural contexts.” The program also looks beyond specific regions and engages in cross-regional comparisons.

In addition to President Simon’s strong commitment and support, Provost Wilcox, VP Gray, and the deans of James Madison College and International Studies and Programs (ISP) provided support for the program, which is housed within ISP. As of last year, the Muslim Studies Initiative had hired three new faculty, two in the College of Social Science and one in James Madison College. Three other new faculty, in geography, sociology, and French literature, have research and teaching interests related to Muslim studies. Searches for additional faculty are currently under way in the departments of Religious Studies, Political Science, and Journalism. In all, the program now has over a dozen core faculty, says Ayoob, who is directing both the specialization and the program.

Political Islam is likely to have an important role in shaping the future particularly of the Middle East, which is the political if not the demographic epicenter of the Muslim world, Ayoob says. “The Middle East is also vitally important to the United States for economic and strategic reasons” he adds. “With the future of political Islam inextricably intertwined both with the process of democratization and with American policies, it is imperative for Americans to understand this important phenomenon in a dispassionate and objective manner and not be led astray by the instant expertise of political pundits.” His new book will help people understand political Islam in all its different manifestations and help clear away many of the misunderstandings that cloud perceptions of Islam and political Islam.

The Count on “Sesame Street” loves numbers. So do mathematics researchers, but Peter Bates, professor and chair of mathematics, says what they love even more is the art of solving the abstract problems they work on.

An example involving knot theory helps him explain. Researchers focusing on topology and geometry study the properties of surfaces in many dimensions. He offers a simple problem in three-dimensional space: “Suppose you fasten one end of a rope to a wall, tie two knots in the rope, then fasten the other end to another wall. Now, slide the knots together. Are there any two knots where one will undo the other?” he asks. The answer is no. “But how do you figure that out, given the infinite number of knots you could try?” he asks. “One must first find a way to mathematically describe knots in a precise way and in such a way that one can then ‘add’ knots.” That’s the kind of problem a mathematician gets excited about: it requires a great deal of creativity and the ability to think abstractly.

Few are likely to encounter such a problem in reality, Bates admits, and even if they did, many mathematicians wouldn’t care very much. They solve sticky problems and find satisfaction not so much in advancing technology, though that happens, but for the beauty of the constructions they develop in the course of finding those solutions. Mathematics research is a kind of art form, and creating a proof or solving a problem like the existence of anti-knots yields a sense of satisfaction a painter or a musician would understand.

But, as it happens, classifying knots has important applications, Bates adds. Strands of DNA coil and knot, and untangling those knots provides important information to genomics researchers. String theory, which physicists use to explain the universe, also involves knots.

Mathematics is an exact science, Bates explains, but math researchers often engage in speculation: they make conjectures about what they think is true and then set about trying to actually prove it. That’s how the field progresses. Mathematical theorems are true, he adds, but not necessarily tied to reality. Numbers themselves are abstractions, concepts devised by humans to keep track of things. Still, mathematicians have precise definitions for numbers and for surfaces and geometric objects that might not be found in the physical world.

What is surprising, Bates adds, is that mathematics is extremely successful in describing the physical world. “It is believed that mathematics will someday describe most of the biological world, too, allowing greater ability to eradicate diseases, improve crops, understand how the body functions, and more.”

In addition to topology and geometry, math researchers explore algebraic geometry, analysis, number theory, differential equations, and other branches. The fields are very different but linked, Bates says, and experts in one branch typically won’t understand the fine points of another.

Mathematicians’ abstract research often finds its way to concrete applications. Analysts study functions, rules that define how something moves from one point to another: transmission of information through wires, cables, radio waves, X-rays, and radar, for example. NMR, MRI, and PET scans analyze information from streams of signals. Cryptography, the technology behind secure transmission of information and funds, uses factors of very large numbers that are the product of two prime numbers known only to the coder.

Bates’ own research is on infinite-dimensional dynamical systems. Henri Poincaré, a French mathematician who died in 1912, developed the theory of dynamical systems to study the motion of planets in space. Using Newton’s laws based on Keplar’s observations, he tried to predict how the planets move—and developed this new branch of mathematics in the process.

Bates studies a particular kind of dynamical system: one with infinite dimensions. The object of his research, he explains, is not the points (or planets) in three-dimensional space but the space in which the points, each representing a mathematical function, move. He looks for structures, for ways to predict behavior in sets of rules, or functions. His research has applications in physics, engineering, biology, materials science—any area where properties change over time.

Again he offers examples to explain. Put bacteria in Jell-O, he suggests, and count their growth over time. With an unlimited food supply, the population will grow exponentially. “We can write an equation to explain that change and therefore predict the population at any time because the prediction is based on a law that is true,” he says. But as the food supply declines, the bacteria compete and population growth slows. “The equation isn’t true any more; there’s a limit to how much the bacteria can grow. The equation can be rewritten to reflect that limit so that it’s still true and the prediction can be accurate.” The equation can be amended to include temperature and other variables, he adds.

“Take a glass of water containing an ice cube,” he continues. “The water is warmer than the ice and so-called latent heat is sucked out of the water to melt the ice. But why do the corners melt before the edges?” The question relates rate of phase transfer—the change from solid ice to liquid—to the geometry of the object. The interplay of temperature and phases is not a simple relationship, he adds. “The equations describing that relationship quickly become very complicated to account for geometric effects.”

He offers other examples of questions his research might address. “Take two materials, say copper and gold, and melt them to a homogenous mixture, then cool the mixture to produce an alloy. Over time the materials separate into areas with two different concentrations of copper and gold and the grain size gradually coarsens. How and why does that happen?

“A nuclear reactor is shielded with a shell of stainless steel, a crystalline substance where grains change gradually. Bombarding those grains with neutrons speeds the process and the shell can become brittle and break.” He ticks off other areas where his research has applications: blades in the turbines of jet engines, materials in car engines.

Bates starts by thinking about pure math: a set of equations to explore and solve. “It’s mental exploration for the sake of exploring,” he says. “Like climbing a mountain because it’s there.”

But then an engineer or physicist might offer equations derived to define some physical occurrence—the nuclear reactor problem, for example. As a mathematician he can look at the fundamentals behind those equations. And exploring them may take him down new paths of discovery.