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Tarek Masoud

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Tarek Masoud

Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Governance
Harvard Kennedy School
Tarek Masoud is the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Governance at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.... Read more about Tarek Masoud
John F. Kennedy School of Government
124 Mount Auburn St. 200N-246
Cambridge, MA 02138
tarek_masoud@hks.harvard.edu
p: 617-496-3036

"Religious Freedom in Islam" by Daniel Philpott

March 5, 2020

In a Director's Series lecture co-hosted by the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School, Daniel Philpott, Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, presented on his recent book, Religious Freedom in Islam: The Fate of a Universal Human Right in the Muslim World Today (2019).  The lecture was followed by a discussion moderated by Faculty Director,  Professor Tarek Masoud, about the meaning of religious freedom in Muslim-majority countries and its challenges and opportunities. 

Watch the video!

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Read more about "Religious Freedom in Islam" by Daniel Philpott

DPI 440: Middle Eastern Politics and Policy

Instructor: Tarek Masoud

Explores the major political, economic, social, and security challenges facing - and emanating from - the Middle East. Particular attention paid to the causes of the so-called Arab Spring and the prospects for genuine democratization. Explores the role of colonial legacies, Islam, peculiarities of the physical environment, demographic patterns, cultures of patriarchy, the distortions of foreign aid and oil wealth, and the machinations of great powers in generating the region's particular pattern of political development. Embraces a variety of theoretical and empirical literatures, including translated works by Middle Eastern commentators, politicians, and social theorists. Students will emerge from the course with both an understanding of a changing region whose geopolitical importance - to the United States and the world - shows no sign of waning, and a grounding in some of the principal analytic approaches in the study of comparative political systems.

Tarek Masoud. 6/2014. Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt. Cambridge University Press. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Why does Islam seem to dominate Egyptian politics, especially when the country's endemic poverty and deep economic inequality would seem to render it promising terrain for a politics of radical redistribution rather than one of religious conservativism? This book argues that the answer lies not in the political unsophistication of voters, the subordination of economic interests to spiritual ones, or the ineptitude of secular and leftist politicians, but in organizational and social factors that shape the opportunities of parties in authoritarian and democratizing systems to reach potential voters. Tracing the performance of Islamists and their rivals in Egyptian elections over the course of almost forty years, this book not only explains why Islamists win elections, but illuminates the possibilities for the emergence in Egypt of the kind of political pluralism that is at the heart of what we expect from democracy.
Tarek Masoud. 1/2015. “Has The Door Closed on Arab Democracy?” Journal of Democracy, 26, 1, Pp. 74-87. Publisher's VersionAbstract
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, democracy in the Arab world seems farther away today than at any point in the last 25 years, leaving one to conclude that the answer to the question posed in this special anniversary issue of the Journal—“Is Democracy in Decline?”—is, at least in the case of the Arab world, a resounding, even deafening, yes. If democracy is to ever arrive in the region, it will likely be through an evolutionary and elite-driven process.