In their work on Muslims in Western Europe, social scientists often employ four theories to explain the state accommodation of Muslim minorities' religious practices: resource mobilisation theory, political opportunity structure theory, ideological theories, and approaches highlighting the influence of churchÁstate relations. In this article, I propose a dynamic-compound framework which outlines the interactions between these four theories, and argue that it is necessary to include a fifth independent variable to account for the religious traditions characteristic of a particular group. In analysing the state accommodation of the religious practices of Muslim minorities, taking the institutional framework of Islam into account clarifies the impact of churchÁstate structures, based on Christianity and a history of conflict between church and state in Europe.

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This article analyzes the impact of two key components of Kemalist ideology, populism and secularism, on the policymaking process of modern Turkey by utilizing historical institutionalism and the political-cultural approach. The Headscarf Ban Policy, which has been implemented discretionarily since 1981 and intensively since 1997, provides an illustrative case study of the broader debates over freedom of religion, secularism, and democracy, and helps to uncover the influence of populism and secularism, as well as the interaction between these two principles. The analysis reveals the principle of populism, which has been much overlooked in the literature, as a key determinant of state-centric reforms as well as a method of legitimizing the undemocratic version of secularism advocated by the state.

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In recent decades, political Islam has increasingly become a focus of politicalscience. Numerous branches of scholarship that analyze its dynamicswithin seemingly divergent theoretical frameworks have emerged. Somescholars have concentrated on international security threats stemming frompolitical Islam (what can be called the outcomes of this phenomenon),whereas others have focused on the causes of religious resurgence in anattempt to identify what has led to political Islam’s revival. This reviewessay will evaluate the second branch of scholarship, which, I believe,explores the core of the overarching issue and helps identify the causes, the“how” and “why” of the matter, rather then providing a descriptive analysisof “what” is happening.How and why Islamic social/political movements (ISPMs) haveemerged, as well as what sociopolitical circumstances determine where theyare headed, is essential to studying political Islam effectively. To this end, Iwill narrowly focus on the literature of ISPMs in Turkey,1 whose “secular”identity makes it an intriguing and unique case in comparison to other predominantlyMuslim countries, presumably with the exception of Tunisia.Thus, the emergence of strong Islamic movements in Turkey, how the interplaybetween the state and these groups have unfolded, and the futureprospects have broader implications for social movements, civil society, anddemocratization in numerous countries. Moreover, the academic work onIslamic movements is highly dynamic, since current social and politicalevents continuously shape these movements, which affect the country’s sociopolitical context ...