Abstract
When the first drafters of constitutional texts for Arab political systems began their work in the second half of the nineteenth century, Islamic political concepts occasionally formed part of the backdrop for their efforts but rarely intruded into the foreground. When they did, they usually excited little attention or scrutiny. Yet beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, a slow process of Islamic inflation began—constitutional clauses, while remaining either largely platitudinous or very detailed, grew far more fulsome and ambitious. This inflationary trend was augmented by a significant change in the public debate: Islam gradually but quite forcefully moved into the foreground, alternately pulled in by bombastic regimes and pushed in by assertive social and political movements. Yet despite the remarkably inflationary trend in the Islamic nature of constitutional clauses and debate, the actual effect on the legal and constitutional order remained slim. The political upheavals of 2011 and the electoral rise of Islamist movements are having the paradoxical effect of bringing a halt to the inflationary spiral—and the actors placing the cap on existing texts are turning out to be the Islamist movements themselves. Their goal is to move discussions of Islam in public life from hot air to cold reality