Acknowledgments

The inspiration for this book came from a coauthored piece in the Annual Review of Political Science that we published in 2014 titled “Is There an Islamist Political Advantage?” The prevailing assumption that we questioned in that article is very much linked to the presumptions about the role of religion in Muslim societies that we interrogate in this volume. Yet, because the scope here is much broader, we decided to bring together a diverse group of outstanding social scientists with area expertise in various parts of the Islamic world. We are grateful to these scholars for accepting our invitation to contribute to this volume and for embracing our goal to investigate rather than presume both whether and how religion influences social, political, and economic outcomes in Muslim societies.

The project benefited greatly from two book workshops that were held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in May 2019 and Cambridge, Massachusetts, in December 2019. The former was generously funded by the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies (WCED) and the Digital Islamic Studies Curriculum (DISC) at the University of Michigan. Derek Groom (WCED) and Evan Murphy (DISC) provided excellent administrative support. For the latter, we received generous funding from the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA) at Harvard University. At the WCFIA, we are immensely grateful to Sarah Banse, who organized and coordinated the Cambridge workshop, and Kathleen Hoover, who provided administrative support throughout the process of putting together the book.

Finally, we owe a debt of gratitude to both Molly Balikov and Alyssa Callan at Oxford University Press. They have been a crucial source of support and an absolute pleasure to work with throughout the process. We especially appreciate their patience, as the timing of this Handbook coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to delays for us and many of the contributors to this volume.

Melani Cammett, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Pauline Jones, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA