The rise of Islamic movements is one of the major issues in most developing Muslim-majority countries today. Although the calls for a return to Islam as an alternative solution to 'endemic social and political problems' is not new, the current Islamic revival seems to have a greater resonance, politically and socially, than in earlier periods, and over a wider geographic scope. Yet there is variation in the form and intensity of manifestation of this revival, ranging from slightly increased popularity of Islamic practices and penetration of an Islamic discourse into the politics to extreme levels of violence and civil war.

This paper is an attempt to understand one part of this increasingly popular and interesting religious trend. The main question I am trying to answer is when do Islamic movements turn violent, and sometimes lead to Islamic revolutions? Is it possible to determine the variables leading some movements to turn into revolutions while others remain within the legal boundaries?

To answer this question I use a comparative study design. A selection of three Islamic countries with different outcomes on the dependent variable, provide a good test of religious based explanations, which are the strongest explanations so far in the literature. The variations within the Islamic world help to distinguish structural conditions in which radicalism flourishes and eliminate the possibility of any religiously centered explanation. In other words, when Islam is the constant (which is the case for all Islamic movements!), how do we explain different outcomes without using religion as an explanatory variable?