The point of departure in this chapter is Niall Ferguson's 2006 claim that 'as works of prophecy go' S.P. Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' thesis has been 'a real winner.' This claim is examined in the light both of the persistent scholarly verdict that the thesis is deeply flawed, and its continued public and academic usage since it first appeared in 1993 as an article in Foreign Affairs. Given that the thesis is deemed to misrepresent, rather than capture, the tensions existing between Islam and the West now and into the future, why has it persisted as long as it has?

The burden of Huntington's thesis is that future wars will be conducted by entire civilizations - though principally Islam and the West - and be driven largely by cultural differences at the fault-lines of contact between them. Huntington had proposed this as a model of international relations to replace the old Cold War paradigm that had ended with the break-up of the Soviet Union and the demise of Communism. His aim was to construct an equally simple model of global politics that could predict and explain the kind of conflict that would come to dominate international relations.

While Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' was denied paradigmatic status, this chapter considers aspects of his futurological model that he may have got right or partially right. This includes the key concepts of 'culture' and 'civilization', which he is credited with introducing to the study of international relations, and the 'helpfulness' of his thesis in accounting for the rise of populist far-right parties, particularly in Europe, and their growing electoral success. The early warning that Huntington provided of civilizational alienation between Muslims and Hindus on the subcontinent and the BJP's agenda of turning India into a Hindu state is also looked at in the context of a regional case study of a civilizational 'clash' ostensibly well underway.

That Huntington's thesis may also have derived a degree of reinforcement from the phenomenon of Islamist radicalization on the one hand, and the rise of Islamophobia on the other, is also explored. Reinforcement also comes in the form of Islamist narratives that conjure up an apocalyptic confrontation between Islam and the West, narratives that are constructed independently of Huntington's, but in terms of doomsday scenarios run parallel with his.

The chapter ends by reflecting on the place where the 'clash of civilizations' has arrived, and currently occupies in the study of international relations.

Is Pakistan the ‘Islamic’ Republic it claims to be? How has it sought to resolve its Islamic identity? What role have its constitutions played in addressing this contested and contentious problem? What issues have different ‘Islamic’ constitutional innovations produced? What issues need be considered in order to resolve the problem of reconciling the role and place of Islam in the state? This thesis addresses these related questions and provokes the reader to reconsider the conventional wisdom held about Islamisation as a means to render Pakistan suitably Islamic.

This thesis charts new territory by mapping the origins and evolution of constitutional ideas pertaining to Islam. It demonstrates that Islamic constitutional reforms were geared to address pertinent political problems in Pakistan and respond to new challenges, ideologies and historical contingencies. It historicises the process that has led to the belief that Islamisation, as it is understood today, is the preeminent and exclusive method of creating an Islamic political order in Pakistan.

This thesis demonstrates that the important and contentious issues pertaining to Islam possess a close constitutional connection. It investigates the question of why Islamic provisions in Pakistan’s constitutional texts assume the shape they do. It demonstrates that the idea of an Islamic Pakistan has been an evolving concept driven as much by politics as it is by historical contingencies. It explains that the nature of the legal and sovereign imaginaries of the nation-state itself is a key to understanding Pakistan’s inner ambiguities and the country’s struggle to resolve its Islamic identity. It argues that answers to the question of what it is that makes a political and legal order Islamic remains unclear and suggests that perhaps more insoluble and intractable issues need to be considered when constituting religion within the framework of the nation-state. This thesis also proffers insights into potential opportunities and pitfalls which constitution-makers may encounter in relation to the constitutionalising of Islam

Finally, this thesis is a Thesis by Publication and its five substantive chapters are in the form of self-contained papers – four of which have been accepted for publication and the fifth chapter is at present under review.

This book sheds light on religiously motivated extremism and violence in South Asia, a phenomenon which ostensibly poses critical and unique challenges to the peace, security and governance not only of the region, but also of the world at large. The book is distinctive in-so-far as it re-examines conventional wisdom held about religious extremism in South Asia and departs from the literature which centres its analyses on Islamic militancy based on the questions and assumptions of the West's 'war on terror'.
This volume also offers a comprehensive analysis of new extremist movements and how their emergence and success places existing theoretical frameworks in the study of religious extremism into question. This collection further examines topical issues including the study of social media and its impact on the evolution and operation of violent extremism. It also analyses grassroots and innovative non-state initiatives aimed to counter extremist ideologies. Through case studies focusing on Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, this collection examines extremist materials, methods of political mobilisation and recruitment processes and maps the interconnected nature of sociological change with the ideological and political transformations of extremist movements.

Religious extremism is among the most pertinent challenges to state and society in the contemporary world. While it is a global phenomenon and the subject of considerable academic scholarship and journalistic inquiry, in South Asia those challenges manifest in equally deadly but often decidedly different ways.

This chapter investigates the rise of populist politics in light of two variables: populism’s relation to nationalism, and the way populism and nationalism are interacting in the Asia-Pacific region. The chapter shifts the focus to the relatively neglected testing grounds of South and Southeast Asia. In contrast to Europe and Latin America, Southeast Asia exhibits the creation of national identities based on religious culture, where religion is being projected via populist discourse as the core marker of statehood and nationality. Irrespective of the dominant religion, political movements have actively promoted national identity essentially in terms of that religion. Under such an exclusivist prescription of nationhood, there is no place for the multicultural state or secular pluralism, and the prospect of cultural ‘wars’ breaking out beckons.