Please join the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Middle East program for a public discussion marking the launch of a new edited volume, “Islamic Institutions in Arab States: Mapping the Dynamics of Control, Co-option, and Contention.”

Religious authority is an increasingly influential but poorly understood source of power in governments throughout the Middle East. Who speaks for Islam in the region? How do Islamists and fundamentalists harness and exert religious authority, despite Islam’s largely decentralized power structure?