Follow Us
From the Editors
Jadaliyya Launches DARS Page: Daily Acts of Resistance and Subversion
Tadween Publishing Blog is here! Check it out
Jadaliyya's first book is now available! Click here.
Want to find out about new books? Visit our expanding NEWTON page. Click here.
Interested in writing a Review for Jadaliyya? Visit our Call for Reviews here.
الآن . . . القسم العربي بحلة جديدة
Jadaliyya Launches Photography Page (click here!)
Call for Photos: Become a Contributing Photographer at Jadaliyya
Sectarianism
Month-by-Month Summary of Developments in Syria (Updated)
![[ICG logo. Image from crisisgroup.org]](/content_images/3/sm_ICG_Logoweb.jpg "[ICG logo. Image from crisisgroup.org]")
[The following monthly summaries on developments in Syria were compiled and published by the International Crisis Group (ICG). Jadaliyya Reports will update this post each month as subsequent monthly summaries are issued.] April 2013 Opposition further consolidated foothold in south with seizure of military base near Daraa 3 April, while regime forces mounted successful counter-attacks in Damascus, Homs, 14 April broke 6-month rebel siege of Wadi al-Deif and Hamidiya military compounds outside Maarat al-Numan in north. Fighting intensified in western city Al-Qusayr; Hizbollah fighters from Lebanon reported to be leading Al-Qusayr operation against ...
Keep Reading »معادلة العنف: عن قتلة ضياء الخالدي
في سياق تمثيل الواقع روائياً تطالعنا مقولة، نرى أنها تمتلك قدراً وافراً من الموضوعية، مفادها: أن على الروايات التي تريد تمثيل وقائع معينة التحرر من ضغوط تلك الوقائع وامتداداتها الزمانية؛ لكي يكون النظر إليها أوسع وأشمل، ومن ثم يكون العمل أنجح وأعمق أثراً. وفقاً لتلك المقولة نرى أن رواية “قتلة” لضياء الخالدي، والصادرة في بيروت عام 2012 عن دار التنوير، قد نجحت بمقدار جيد في التحرر من ضغوط الواقع المحتقن الذي سعت إلى تمثيله. وانطلاقاً من عنوانها، تنبئ الرواية قارئها أن ثمة عنف كثير، سيكون أساس متنها الحكائي. ذلك العنف الذي اجتاح بغداد في سنوات الذروة من محنتها في عهدها الجديد، ولم تزل آثاره ممتدة حتى اليوم. البنية الحكائية للرواية تتشكل على يد ...
Keep Reading »There Can Only Be One: Tamam Salam and Lebanese Politics
![[View of al-Amin Mosque constructed by Rafiq al-Hariri between 2002 and 2007. Photo by James Gallagher via Flickr]](/content_images/3/sm_3222756556_63c65e94e0.jpg "[View of al-Amin Mosque constructed by Rafiq al-Hariri between 2002 and 2007. Photo by James Gallagher via Flickr]")
On Saturday 6 April 2013, the Lebanese Parliament overwhelmingly nominated Tamam Saeb Salim Salam to become the new Prime Minister. That the premiership in Lebanon should return to Beirut is not strange in and of itself. However, the return of the premiership to the Mseitbeh residence of the Salams—an old notable family that has played a pivotal role in Lebanon’s political life since the late Ottoman and French colonial periods—does not necessarily conform with the traditional meaning of notable politics. Rather, it sheds light on the current nature of (post-war) Lebanese politics, and specifically the transformation of the Sunni za’ama. To speak of the Sunni za’ama ...
Keep Reading »The Kurdish Question and Turkish-Israeli Relations: An Interview with Professor Cihan Tugal
In his Nowruz message on 21 March, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, declared a ceasefire and called on armed militants to withdraw from Turkish territory. He said, “Today we are waking up to a new Middle East, a new Turkey, and a new future” and added, “The Middle East and Central Asia are looking for a new order. A new model is a necessity, like bread and water. It’s inevitable that Anatolia and Mesopotamia will be pioneers in building this model.” Öcalan’s message was warmly welcomed by the million-strong crowd gathered for Nowruz celebrations in the city of Diyarbakir. The next day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ...
Keep Reading »Bosnia's Dangerous Tango: Islam and Nationalism
![[ICG logo. Image from crisisgroup.org]](/content_images/3/sm_ICGlogoweb.jpg "[ICG logo. Image from crisisgroup.org]")
[The following report was issued by International Crisis Group on 26 February 2013.] Bosnia's Dangerous Tango: Islam and Nationalism Overview The Bosniak community is deeply frustrated with the dysfunctional government, flawed constitution and economic stagnation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), as well as renewed Croat and Serb challenges to the state’s territorial integrity. The Islamic community has taken a leading role in channelling popular anger, filling a vacuum left by Bosniak political parties, whose leadership seems adrift. Political Islam is a novelty in Bosnia, and its rise is seen as threatening to secular parties and non-Muslims. On the margins of ...
Keep Reading »Lebanon's Sect Addiction
![[Lebanon's former electoral districts. Photo courtesy of MESH.]](/content_images/3/sm_3624510242_36df61879e_m.jpg "[Lebanon's former electoral districts. Photo courtesy of MESH.]")
Lebanese MPs outraged secularists and campaigners opposed to sectarian politics this past week by provisionally approving a voting law that would make it so citizens could only vote for candidates of their own sect. The so-called Orthodox Gathering draft law still needs to pass a parliamentary vote—but activists and youth groups have already decried it as a step back from representative democracy and a lurch towards confessional – some claimed racist – politics. The bill was championed by Michel Aoun, the leader of the Maronite Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) that contributes seven ministers to Lebanon’s current cabinet, alongside the Shiite Hezbollah, ...
Keep Reading »Civil Marriage Fatwas, the Lebanese State, and Renegade Bacteria
![[Photo by the author.]](/content_images/3/sm_ring3-1.jpg "[Photo by the author.]")
For some philosophers, the condition of being contemporary is to actually be anachronistic to and critical of the present, to see its darkness, and to avoid being absorbed by the vortex of neo-liberal capitalism, not to mention by the devastating logics of Lebanese political discourse. When the Sunni Mufti of Lebanon, Mohammad Rashid Qabbani–not a philosopher except in the colloquial sense–declared a fatwa on 28 January 2013 against those who support or endorse civil marriage in Lebanon, stating in clear terms how they will be expelled from the metaphorical "wolf pack," he gives a whole new meaning to being out of sync. The civil marriage (or “optional civil ...
Keep Reading »Tipping Towards Iraq's Squares: An Interview with Falah Alwan
The Iraqi state releasing 335 detainees this past week? Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki bussing in a few hundred paid “supporters” to rally? What gives? Signs point to the wave of mass anti-government protests mostly centered around the provinces al-Anbar, Niniweh, and Salah al-Deen, shaking Iraq since 21 December 2012. These evolving mobilizations have sometimes brought out numbers approaching hundreds of thousands (as in Mosul’s Ahrar Square) and led to the blocking of a major Iraq-Jordan-Syria Highway. Some have also claimed the recent mobilizations as an “Iraqi Spring.” By 7 January 2013, Iraqi security and pro-government thugs began physical attacks against ...
Keep Reading »United Nations Periodic Update on Syria
![[Damaged street in Homs, Syria, November 2012. Image by Freedom House via Flickr]](/content_images/3/sm_sryia122912web.jpg "[Damaged street in Homs, Syria, November 2012. Image by Freedom House via Flickr]")
[The following report was issued by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic of the United Nations on 20 December 2012.] Introduction The unrelenting violence in Syria has resulted in thousands of deaths; untold thousands of wounded, detained, and disappeared; and physical destruction on a massive scale. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes, and those that remain struggle to secure basic necessities. World heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed, as have entire neighbourhoods. Civilians have borne the brunt of escalating armed confrontations as the front lines between ...
Keep Reading »Mosques Under Construction Re-Demolished by Authorities in Bahrain
![[Site of Demolished Al-Sajad Mosque in Bahrain. Image from bahrainrights.org]](/content_images/3/sm_bahrainmosque.png "[Site of Demolished Al-Sajad Mosque in Bahrain. Image from bahrainrights.org]")
[The following report was issued by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights on 9 December 2012.] The Bahrain Center for Human Rights expresses concern over the continued attacks on religious freedom represented in the re-demolishing of Shia mosques, which have been under construction since they were initially attacked and demolished during the government crack-down in 2011. On December 1st, 2012, government bulldozers demolished four mosques for the second time; no notification was given to the people nor to the municipalities representative. These mosques belong to the Shia sect in the Hamad Town, and were under construction at the time. These four mosques are among the ...
Keep Reading »The North Caucasus: The Challenges of Integration (II), Islam, the Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency
[The following report was issued by International Crisis Group on 19 October 2012.] The North Caucasus: The Challenges of Integration (II), Islam, the Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency Executive Summary Armed conflict in the North Caucasus is the most violent in Europe today. Insurgents seeking a regional political unit founded on Sharia (Islamic law) attack Russian officials and security forces, whose main response until recently has been a tough focus on eradicating the insurgency with a massive security presence, leaving little room for dialogue. While this policy has had successes, some 574 insurgents, security forces and civilians have died through ...
Keep Reading »Divided We Stand: Libya's Enduring Conflicts
![[Protesters in Benghazi in 2011. Image by Al Jazeera English via Flickr]](/content_images/3/sm_stillloudlibyaweb.jpg "[Protesters in Benghazi in 2011. Image by Al Jazeera English via Flickr]")
[The following report was issued by International Crisis Group on 14 September 2012.] Divided We Stand: Libya's Enduring Conflicts Executive Summary The 11 September killing of the U.S. ambassador and three of his colleagues is a stark reminder of Libya’s security challenges. It also should serve as a wake-up call. There is, of course, more than one way to look at the country today: as one of the more encouraging Arab uprisings, recovering faster than expected; or as a country of regions and localities pulling in different directions, beset by intercommunal strife and where well-armed groups freely roam. Evidence exists for both: successful elections ...
Keep Reading »Questioning Sectarianism in Bahrain and Beyond: An Interview with Justin Gengler
In popular accounts of politics in the Arabian Peninsula in this post-Arab uprisings era, "sectarianism" has been an omnipresent signifier for conflict and unrest. The term commonly acts – implicitly, because it is never qualified or defined – as both a description of political contestation and, simultaneously, an explanation for it. The history of "sectarianism" in academia, as an object of study and as an analytic with explanatory power, is a contentious one, used at times ...
Keep Reading »The Alawite Dilemma in Homs
Syria's Alawites are often portrayed as a monolithic religious community which has unconditionally and unwavering supported the Syrian regime through the crisis which has shaken the country since March 2011. However, very little attention has been paid to the community’s diversity and to reasons for its support of the regime that might extend beyond the simplistic equation: "The ruling family is Alawite, and therefore Syria’s Alawites support the regime." While emphasizing the Alawite ...
Keep Reading »تمام سلام رئيساً للحكومة اللبنانية: شركة غير تنافسية
أن تعود رئاسة مجلس الوزراء إلى بيروت ليس بالأمر المستغرب. أما أن تعود إلى "دار المصيطبة"، دار آل سلام، التي كانت محوراً للسياسة اللبنانية منذ ما قبل الاستقلال العام ١٩٤٣، فهذا ما يطرح العديد من الأبعاد التي ربما تكون فقدت معانيها التقليدية ويساهم في المقابل بتقديم تفسيرات جديدة حول واقع السياسة اللبنانية وما آلت اليه في سنوات ما بعد الحرب، خصوصاً أبعاد تحولات الزعامة السنية. وهنا، حين نقول الزعامة السنية لا نفترض أن تمثيل الطائفة السنية، أو أي طائفة أخرى، ينحصر بمرجعية واحدة فقط. لا بل نشير ...
Keep Reading »Petition to Release 79-Year-Old Kurdish Prisoner
[The following article was issued by Alliance for Kurdish Rights on 18 March 2013.] A petition has been launched to call for the release of Elfo Ülper, a seventy-nine year old Kurdish mother who has been imprisoned in an M-Type Prison for eight years and suffers from high blood tension and rheumatism. Elfo Ülper is a seventy-nine year-old mother born in the Kurdish province of Şırnak in Turkey. Having been committed to eighteen years in prison due to the alleged crime of “carrying ...
Keep Reading »A Bitter Legacy: Lessons of De-Baathification in Iraq
[The following report was issued by the International Center for Transitional Justice on 4 March 2013.] A Bitter Legacy: Lessons of De-Baathification in Iraq Executive Summary The dramatic collapse of regimes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has raised many important policy and justice questions. One key question is how to deal with former regimes’ security and government apparatuses. The National Democratic Party in Egypt and the Constitutional Rally party in Tunisia were ...
Keep Reading »Highly Unorthodox: The Week Lebanon Went Secular (And Ended Up More Sectarian Than Ever…)
When some future historian writes a chronicle of twenty-first-century Lebanon, she will likely devote a bemused footnote to the odd events of February 2013, when the country’s leaders saw fit to tear down a pillar of the confessional regime one week, only to erect another one a week later. On 11 February, the Justice Ministry ruled that the recent civil marriage of Khouloud Sukkarieh and Nidal Darwish was legal, thereby establishing a momentous precedent that will likely have ...
Keep Reading »Will Civil Marriage End Lebanon’s Confessional System?
In tying the matrimonial knot last week, Kholoud Succariyeh and Nidal Darwish sliced through a cultural, legal, sectarian knot of Gordian proportions. The pair became the first couple in history to be wed in a civil marriage on Lebanese soil. Until last week, Lebanese citizens (or, only those who can afford it) have generally traveled to Cyprus to get hitched. The only way to do the deed inside Lebanon requires a contract issued by religious personal status authorities, with all the legal implications ...
Keep Reading »Turkey's Kurdish Impasse
[The following report was issued by International Crisis Group on 30 November 2012.] Turkey's Kurdish Impasse: The View from Diyarbakır Executive Summary As Turkey’s biggest Kurdish-majority city and province, Diyarbakır is critical to any examination of the country’s Kurdish problem and of the insurgent PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party). The armed conflict has deteriorated in the past year and a half to its worst level in over a decade, with increased political friction and violence leading to the ...
Keep Reading »Call for Papers -- Sectarianism in the Contemporary Middle East: Religious and Political Discourses (London, 13 April 2013)
Sectarianism in the Contemporary Middle East: Religious and Political Discourses 13 April 2013 Al-Khoei Foundation, London The Centre for Academic Shi'a Studies is pleased to announce its third annual conference titled "Sectarianism in the Contemporary Middle East: Religious and Political Discourses," which will be held at the Al-Khoei Foundation in London on Saturday 13 April 2013. CASS encourages new research trajectories based on historical, sociological, political, religious, and ...
Keep Reading »The Scared Islamists And Their Frightened Majority
To those unfamiliar with the “civil”/religious debate in Egypt, the term “civil” was recently dubbed to mark an assembly of disparate, sometimes conflicting, ideologies and positions that stand for the creation of what has come to be known as a “civil state.” This “civil state” is in turn commonly imagined as something that stands against a theocratic (Islamic) state, but not necessarily against political Islam per se — for there are several Islamic versions of the “civil.” The term “civil” forced itself ...
Keep Reading »The Struggle for Security in Eastern Libya
[The following report was issued by the Carnegie Endowment in September 2012.] The Struggle for Security in Eastern Libya Summary Despite successful parliamentary elections in early July, localized clashes over identity, power, and resources persist in Libya, straining the capacity of the weak government, deterring foreign investment, and possibly stunting the emergence of democratic institutions. The most pressing of these conflicts — growing insecurity in Libya’s eastern ...
Keep Reading »انتفاضة الدفاع عن الرسول بين لوع جماعة الإخوان ومقاومة الاستعمار
لا يسع من يتابع تطورات الأحداث المترتبة على الفيلم المسيء للرسول في مصر والعالم العربي إلا أن يشعر بحسرة شديدة على ما آلت إليه أحوالنا، بعدما كشفته عبثية الأحداث من تدني مستوى الوعي المهيمن في البلاد ومحدودية قدرات القائمين على الأمور فيها. وقد استفاض الكثير من الزملاء في تحليل ردود الأفعال على هذا الحدث بالفعل. منهم من أشار إلى أن مجريات الانتفاضة التي أعقبت الفيلم ساهمت في نشر فيلم تافه يعيب في الرسول في كل أرجاء العالم تحت إدعاء مناهضته. فلا أظن أننا شاهدنا فيلماً راج بهذا الشكل في خلال العقد ...
Keep Reading »Hot on Facebook
The myth of mass Bedouin criminality is foregrounded despite documented evidence that some families were forcibly and illegally displaced by the authorities and had returned, while others had been ordered by the authorities to live and work on the land under question.click | email | tweet
.jpg){kind=small}
From Jadaliyya Reports
Top Jadaliyya Tags
Jadalicious / جدلشس
Noteworthy
Twitter Updates
Jadaliyya Features
.jpg)
Latest Entries
View All Entries »- Maghreb Media Roundup (May 24)
- أوهام ليبرالية
- Tadween Roundup: News and Analysis from the Publishing/Academic World
- Syria Media Roundup (May 23)
- Asfari Institute Inaugural Conference: New Spaces of Civil Society Activism in the Arab World (Beirut, 23-24 May)
- Women's Rights in the Egyptian Constitution: (Neo)Liberalism's Family Values
- مسخ الذاكرة
- New Texts Out Now: Louise Cainkar, Global Arab World Migrations and Diasporas
- Arabian Peninsula Media Roundup (May 21)
- إعادة الحساب الدائمة: إساءة فهم سوريا بعد سنتين
- From al-Araqib to Susiya: Forced Displacement of Palestinians on Both Sides of the Green Line
- إعجام
- كارل ماركس واليسار في لبنان
- Picturing Algeria
- Egypt Media Roundup (May 20)
- Last Week on Jadaliyya (May 13-19)
- Jadaliyya's Occupation, Intervention, and Law Page Resonates
- Al Jazeera Management Orders Joseph Massad Article Pulled in an Act of Pro-Israel Censorship
- سعادت حسن منتو: قصة قصيرة
- Reports Roundup (May 18)
Pages/Sections
Archive
©2010-2013 by the Arab Studies Institute. All Rights Reserved. info@jadaliyya.com
site by concepcion design