Asef Bayat, Professor of Sociology and Middle East Studies, holds the Chair of Society and Culture of the Modern Middle East at Leiden University, The Netherlands. His research areas range from social movements and non-movements, religion-politics-everyday life, Islam and the modern world, to urban space and politics, and international development. His books include Street Politics: Poor People’s Movements in Iran (Columbia University Press, 1997), Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford University Press, 2007), Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2010), and (with Linda Herrera) Being Young and Muslim: Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (Oxford University Press, 2010).