Islamic Extremism in Kuwait

Falah Abdullah al-Mdaires, a professor of political science at Kuwait University, has written a useful descriptive overview of the multitude of Kuwaiti Islamist political groups active in the tiny Arab Gulf emirate. In fact, his book is the first full-length study of Kuwaiti Islamism and it is based, in part, on his reading and interpretation of secondary studies, primarily in Arabic, as well as a handful of interviews, pamphlets and magazines produced by some of the Kuwaiti Islamist groups he discusses. Despite the empirical ground he breaks, al-Mdaires central argument, which is that ‘Islamism’, defined here as a politicized religious framework that envisions the creation of a state, is essentially monolithic seems to be highly problematic. So is his argument that non-violent and violent Islamist groups are not that different from one another and should be seen as ‘threats’ to the established political order and ‘democracy’. His implication that Kuwait, which is ruled by an absolute monarchy whose head can and has dismissed parliament at will, is a ‘democracy’ is also highly debatable. The book also suffers from dense and dry writing, which additionally suffers from lackluster editing. The transliteration systems used throughout the book are inconsistent and often confusing, since they seem to follow no set transliteration method.