Peace in the Name of Allah

From Anwar Sadat's dramatic gambit in 1977 to the surprising gestures of Muhammad bin Zayed in 2020, signing peace and normalizing relations with Israel was always a hard sale for Arab regimes. Through an analysis of dozens of fatwas, sermons, essays, books, interviews, and other media, Peace in the Name of Allah examines how Egyptian, Jordanian, and Emirati political and religious authorities introduced Islamic justifications for peace with Israel, and how those opposed countered them. The discussion demonstrates the flexible and ambiguous nature of revelation-based political discourses; Islam is neither 'for' or 'against' peace with Israel - people are, as different Muslim political actors take different positions that compete or even contradict one another.