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Theory, Culture & Society
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Sovereignty and Emergency

Political Theology, Islam and American Conservatism

Bryan S. Turner

University of Cambridge

The Huntington thesis of the clash of cultures and American foreign policy analysis are both aspects of the legacy of Carl Schmitt's distinction between friend and foe. This article explores Schmitt's political theology as the theoretical basis of modern politics in terms of the concepts of state sovereignty and the idea of a permanent emergency. Within this Schmittian framework, the analysis of Islam as presented by writers such as Huntington, Fukuyama and Barber is critically analysed. Their analysis of fundamentalism and political Islam fails to grasp the complexity and diversity of modern Islam. The article concludes by examining a number of social and economic processes that make the political division between friend and foe untenable.

Key Words: civilizations • cosmopolitanism • fundamentalism • liberalism • `the political'

Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 19, No. 4, 103-119 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/0263276402019004008
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