The Islamic worlds of welfare.

Studying the varieties of welfare can offer surprising insights in the workings and tensions of Islamist social movements in such major countries as Iran, Egypt, and Turkey. Based on extensive fieldwork and (for Iran) the batteries of socio-economic data, the recent monographs of sociologists Kevan Harris and Cihan Tuğal offer a high-resolution yet panoramic overview. Harris re-positions the Iranian historical 'improvisation called Islamic Republic' as the 'warfare/welfare state' forged in the sacrificial defense against Saddam Hussein's onslaught in the 1980s.