Approaching the Discipline of International Relations: Competing Paradigms and Contrasting Epistemes

Books-in-Brief

By: Nadia Mostafa

Narrated by: Michael G.

Approaching the Discipline of International Relations attempts to present an Islamic paradigm of International Relations, whilst studying and critiquing the knowledge-power nexus of current and historical discourse in International Relations. It explores the historical development of dominant paradigms intrinsic to the discipline of IR as studied from a Eurocentric, Western perspective, and questions their efficacy in relation to the socio-economic-religious realities and context of the Muslim world.

Terminologies and concepts are developed as integral aspects of an Islamic Civilizational Paradigm of International Relations, with premises rooted in the foundational sources of the Qur'an and the Sunnah. In constructing an Islamic Civilizational Paradigm of International Relations, a product of four decades of teaching and research at Cairo University, the author simultaneously challenges the place that Islam broadly occupies within secular paradigms currently dominating International Relations theory. She further explores the type of research questions and analysis that need to be addressed for an Islamic Civilizational Paradigm to have a viable future.

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