American Journal of Political Science (Volume 63, Issue 2)

Violence, Nonviolence, and the Effects of International Human Rights Law

By: Yonatan Lupu, Geoffrey P. R. Wallace

Abstract: Under what conditions are individuals more likely to approve of human rights abuses by their governments? While various theoretical expectations have been offered about public approval of repression, many of them have not been directly tested. We analyze the effects of differing opposition tactics, differing government tactics, and legal constraints on approval of repression through a series of survey experiments in India, Israel, and Argentina. Our results indicate that violent action by opposition groups consistently increases support for government repression. In the context of contentious politics, we find that the effects of international law vary by national context. While our respondents in India were less likely to approve of their government when told the government violated international law, the same information likely increased approval of the government in our Israel experiment. The findings provide insights into the microfoundations of existing theories and suggest areas for theory refinement.

American Political Science Review (Volume 113, Issue 2)

Does Exposure to the Refugee Crisis Make Natives More Hostile?

By: Dominik Hangartner, Elias Dinas, Moritz Marbach, Konstantinos Matakos, Dimitrios Xefteris

Abstract: Although Europe has experienced unprecedented numbers of refugee arrivals in recent years, there exists almost no causal evidence regarding the impact of the refugee crisis on natives’ attitudes, policy preferences, and political engagement. We exploit a natural experiment in the Aegean Sea, where Greek islands close to the Turkish coast experienced a sudden and massive increase in refugee arrivals, while similar islands slightly farther away did not. Leveraging a targeted survey of 2,070 island residents and distance to Turkey as an instrument, we find that direct exposure to refugee arrivals induces sizable and lasting increases in natives’ hostility toward refugees, immigrants, and Muslim minorities; support for restrictive asylum and immigration policies; and political engagement to effect such exclusionary policies. Since refugees only passed through these islands, our findings challenge both standard economic and cultural explanations of anti-immigrant sentiment and show that mere exposure suffices in generating lasting increases in hostility.

Anthropology & Education Quarterly (Volume 50, Issue 1)

Reading as Practice: The Howzevi (Seminarian) Women in Iran and Clair de Lune

By: Amina Tawasil

Abstract: The Iranian howzevi (seminarian) have been key to the Islamic regime’s development. This paper takes as its critical focus the branding of the howzevi as the unenlightened for their support of the regime. I take de Certeau’s reading as poaching to look at how life scripts or ideologies failed to work through women’s bodies. Drawing on fifteen months of fieldwork, I describe how they unsettled ideologies in their reading of de Maupassant’s “Clair de Lune.”

Arab Media & Society (Issue 27)

Marathon TV Watching among Emiratis in the Interactive Media Environment

By: Azza Abdel-Azim Mohamed Ahmed

Abstract: The study investigates the habits of binge TV watching—also called marathon TV watching—among a sample of Emiratis. It refers to watching consecutive episodes of a series in one setting for several hours. The research examines the expected outcomes for binge-watching and the possibilities of anticipating regret after such activity, among a sample of 229 Emiratis living in Abu Dhabi. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 Emiratis to further understand this recently-developed behavior. The results showed a positive significant correlation between expected outcomes, self-regulation deficiency, anticipating regret, and binge-watching. The findings also revealed that most respondents tend to binge-watch alone rather than with others. While gender, marital status, and education do not affect the level of binge-watching, age was an important variable in predicting binge-watching levels. It was found that the lower the age, the higher the deficiency in self-regulation of binge-watching.

Arab Millennials’ Articulation of Identity in Cyberspace: A study of three MENA YouTubers

By: Mohammad Ayish & Abeer AlNajjar                                                                            

Abstract: This study investigates how three young Arab influencers negotiate their identities in cyberspace. Abdallah Al Maghlouth, Abdulrahman Mohammed, and Laila Hzaineh were selected for this study because they were listed among the top MENA influencers by the Arab Social Media Summit (2015) or by Stepfeed. The article draws on the cultural hybridity perspective to demonstrate how these influencers articulate cultural identity across three themes: human engagement, women’s empowerment, and cultural revivalism. Cultural hybridity gained prominence within a range of cultural and social theories beginning in the 1980s. Recently, it has come to be interchangeably used with Robertson’s notion of ‘glocalization’ (Robertson 2012). Hybridity is a dynamic process necessary for cultural co-existence, continuity and for reconciling global sets of values with local (dominantly Arab-Islamic) social norms. Identity is informed by aspects of belonging or not to social groups; cyberspace is a new frontier for shaping and renewing social identities in the Middle East, with the majority of the population under 25 years and great levels of internet penetration, it is important to examine emerging sense of self and groups amongst Arab youth in cyberspace.

Undoing Stereotypical Representations in Arab and Muslim Cinemas: Challenges, Interruptions, and Possibilities

By: Imed Ben Labidi

Abstract: Troubled by a history of misconceptions on Western silver screens, Arab and Muslim filmmakers have kept their cinematic productions thematically close to the reality of their postcolonial cultural and social conditions, while trying to represent their communities in complex ways. In many efforts of artistic excellence, the films they make aim to reverse the frisson of alterity upon which the conception of their disgraced images have been historically predicated; in the process, the films aspire to alter these images and representations. Rarely however does the work of these Arab and Muslim filmmakers reach a global audience. This article locates themes and creative forms in many cinematic narratives of representation, and recommends their interpretation and mediation to a global audience. The article responds to a recent “intellectual turn” in contemporary debate on Arab and Muslim films, calling for the invention of a category called “Muslim Cinema”. The article contextualizes this turn within the contours of Western institutions as sites of epistemological authority and examines its epistemological, racial, and ideological implications and underpinnings in connection to representation.

The Changing Identity of a Living Secular Icon: Al Mayadeen’s Iconization of Jamila Bouhired

By: Christine Crone

Abstract: In December 2013, the pan-Arab TV station Al Mayadeen orchestrated a big public celebration of the former female fighter Jamila Bouhired. In this article, I analyze Al Mayadeen’s celebration of Bouhired as an iconization (Khalili 2009) and investigate how the TV station uses the icon Bouhired to facilitate a particular reading of the past that supports a contemporary political agenda. I investigate how secular icons can take form, develop, and not least become an important tool in a mediatized world where political contests to a large degree are a battle over the symbolic world. By understanding the iconization of Bouhired we understand how the TV station (and the political fractions it represents) reads the past, understands the present, and envisions the future. During the celebration, the Arab uprisings of 2011 are dismissed, while Hezbollah is promoted as the heir of Bouhired’s progressive resistance legacy.

Nationalism and the Use of Pop Music: A Discourse Analysis of the Song “Boshret Kheir”

By: Mohamed Gameel & Salma El Ghetany

Abstract: The Egyptian Arabic song, “Boshret Kheir” or ‘good omen’, represents an example of the role of popular music in promoting populism, patriotism, and the ideology of Egyptian nationalism. Given the song’s popularity, this article poses the question: what transforms an ordinary pop song into a national phenomenon? The song is studied through observational discourse, using visual semiotic analysis of its video clip. The song was adopted as a patriotic anthem of sorts by a segment of society- namely those espousing the mainstream narrative in support of the military. It was produced to encourage political activism and participation but carried a deeper meaning given its affiliation with the ruling military at the time. The song was released ten days before the presidential elections, almost one year after former president Mohammed Morsi was ousted, on June 30th, 2013. Although “Boshret Kheir” was meant to encourage people to participate in the presidential elections, the discourse analysis in this study shows that the song’s lyrics symbolized the election’s legitimacy.

Arab Studies Quarterly (Volume 41, Issue 2)

The Dialectic of Nonsimultaneity in Bahaa Taher's Sunset Oasis

By: Karam AbuSehly

Abstract: The article aims at reading Bahaa Taher's Wāḥat al-Ghuūb (Sunset Oasis) through Ernst Bloch's notion of the simultaneity of the nonsimultaneous (Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen), which foregrounds the existence of a multilayered temporality in the now, together with its inherent contradictions. By deploying the hermeneutical capacity of the simultaneity of the nonsimultaneous, the article shows how Taher highlights the condition of a nation in crisis, through its social and cultural strata that are out of sync. The simultaneity of the nonsimultaneous is, therefore, the underlying logic of the content as well as a form of expression. By analyzing the multilayered temporality, the article argues that Bahaa Taher introduces a multivoiced dialectic, that brings all contradictions to consciousness without mastering and controlling them under a grand narrative.

Revisiting Hitti's Thoughts on Palestine and Arab Identity

By: Gregory J. Shibley

Abstract: Philip K. Hitti was the first scholar to study Arab-American immigration to the United States. Highly influential during the twentieth century, his ideas have lost much of their appeal to current interpreters of the early diaspora of Arab-Americans called Syrians at the time. This article revisits Hitti's thought, focusing on the issues of Palestine and Arab identity. Using primary source material from Hitti's archived papers, plus multiple secondary sources, I argue that Hitti maintained consistency, both in his advocacy of the general Arab stance opposing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and in his construction of Arab identity as different from Syrian identity. On Palestine, Hitti clashed with Albert Einstein, in public discourse and in an acerbic private exchange of correspondence. On Arab identity, Hitti held firm to a strict interpretation, distinguishing Syrians, conceptualized as Christian, from Arabs, conceptualized as Islamic.

Empathy and the Lebanese Civil War of 1958 in the USA

By: Maurice Jr. Labelle

Abstract: This article examines the role that empathy played during the US intervention in the Lebanese civil war of 1958, also known as Operation Blue Bat. Through deep readings of public texts, it explores how a minority of Americans empathized with Lebanese opponents of President Camille Chamoun. After the arrival of US forces, Lebanese anti-Chamounists made their voices heard and feeling felt in the USA via global information providers, enacting cultural interventions. Lebanese dissent was headline news, engendering empathetic processes that reoriented US ways of feeling, thinking, and acting. By using empathy as a point of entry into historical intercultural relations, this article unearths how genuine transnational understandings were socially formed during a moment of conflict. Ultimately, it argues that a focus on empathy gives foreign relations scholars an avenue that eschews nefarious Orientalist binaries and their powers in the process.

Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (Issue 381)

The Terra-cotta Figurines from a Lamp Workshop at Khirbat Shumeila near Beit Nattif, Israel

By: Benyamin Storchan, Achim Lichtenberger

Abstract: In 1934, excavations conducted at Beit Nattif, in the Judaean Shephelah region, uncovered a rich assemblage of waste from a terra-cotta lamp and figurine workshop. The items produced at the workshop, which are now known by the name of the site, are dated to around 300 c.e. and can be considered a hallmark of the regional material culture of the Late Roman period, a time of wideranging cultural influences. Recent excavations at Khirbat Shumeila, located in the immediate Beit Nattif region, have uncovered the remains of a Beit Nattif lamp workshop. The Khirbat Shumeila workshop can be dated to the late 4th century c.e. During the excavations, a number of typical Beit Nattif figurines and a figurine mold were uncovered, providing an opportunity to analyze the stylistic and morphological development of the figurines over 100 years. While the new workshop was focused primarily on lamp production, figurine production existed as a secondary industry, further implying the existence of multiple parallel workshops in the region.

Four Judean Bullae from the 2014 Season at Tel Lachish

By: Martin G. Klingbeil, Michael G. Hasel, Yosef Garfinkel, Néstor H. Petruk

Abstract: The article presents four decorated epigraphic bullae unearthed in the Level III destruction at Lachish during the 2014 season, focusing on the epigraphic, iconographic, and historical aspects of the seal impressions.

Uninscribed Amethyst Scarabs from the Southern Levant

By: Arlette David

Abstract: Prompted by the discovery of a schematic uninscribed amethyst scarab at Tel Abel Beth Maacah in the Upper Galilee, an overview of such scarabs found in the southern Levant is provided, with a typological analysis and a tentative dating and origin of these pieces.

Foreign Food Plants as Prestigious Gifts: The Archaeobotany of the Amarna Age Palace at Tel Beth-Shemesh, Israel

By: Ehud Weiss, Yael Mahler-Slasky, Yoel Melamed, Zvi Lederman, Shlomo Bunimovitz, Shawn Bubel, Dale Manor

Abstract: In contrast with the relatively rich documentation from the el-Amarna archive related to the main city-states of the southern Levant in the Amarna Age (Late Bronze Age IIA; 14th century b.c.e.), archaeological data from these sites is still wanting. This unfortunate situation highlights the importance of the ca. 60,000-item plant collection from the recently exposed Late Bronze Age IIA palace at Tel Beth-Shemesh. Room L1505 in the palace—apparently a pantry due to its contents of foodstuffs and vessels for food preparation and consumption—contained eight deposits of carbonized crop plants. Deposits of almost pure grains and very low numbers of weed seeds were found, indicating that these stored food plants were ready to be used in food preparation. Of special interest is the presence of a sizeable amount of two rare pulses in Levantine archaeobotany—fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum) and Cyprus vetch (Lathyrus ochrus)—only found in two other Bronze Age royal contexts: Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt and the Late Minoan II Unexplored Mansion in Knossos. Thus, in addition to attesting to the agricultural practices and culinary preferences of a Canaanite ruling court during the Amarna Age, this botanical assemblage also hints at prestigious royal gift exchanges of exotic food plants.

Tel Yaqush—An Early Bronze Age Village in the Central Jordan Valley, Israel

By: Yael Rotem, Mark Iserlis, Felix Höflmayer, Yorke M. Rowan

Abstract: This article highlights the results of five excavation seasons at Tel Yaqush, Israel, conducted between the 1989 and 2000 on behalf of The Oriental Institute at The University of Chicago. Tel Yaqush was a medium-sized village, inhabited during the entire Early Bronze Age period, from the mid-4th to the mid-3rd millennia b.c.e. The excavations exposed a dense settlement begun in the Early Bronze Age (EB) I, which ended in a severe conflagration. Apparently rebuilt at the beginning of EB II, the village remained a small site and technically non-urban throughout the period. Destroyed at the end of EB II, it was renewed in EB III, coinciding with the arrival of people bearing the Khirbet Kerak Ware ceramic tradition. This preliminary report includes new observations following recent studies of Tel Yaqush finds, including a new sequence of 14C dates from EB I to III (published in detail elsewhere). The excavation results summarized here reveal the unique role Tel Yaqush played during the shift to urbanism, and its contribution to our understanding of Early Bronze Age village society in the central Jordan Valley.

The Terra-cotta Figurines from a Lamp Workshop at Khirbat Shumeila near Beit Nattif, Israel

By: Benyamin Storchan, Achim Lichtenberger

Abstract: In 1934, excavations conducted at Beit Nattif, in the Judaean Shephelah region, uncovered a rich assemblage of waste from a terra-cotta lamp and figurine workshop. The items produced at the workshop, which are now known by the name of the site, are dated to around 300 c.e. and can be considered a hallmark of the regional material culture of the Late Roman period, a time of wideranging cultural influences. Recent excavations at Khirbat Shumeila, located in the immediate Beit Nattif region, have uncovered the remains of a Beit Nattif lamp workshop. The Khirbat Shumeila workshop can be dated to the late 4th century c.e. During the excavations, a number of typical Beit Nattif figurines and a figurine mold were uncovered, providing an opportunity to analyze the stylistic and morphological development of the figurines over 100 years. While the new workshop was focused primarily on lamp production, figurine production existed as a secondary industry, further implying the existence of multiple parallel workshops in the region.

Canaanite Reḥob: Tel Reḥov in the Late Bronze Age

By: Amihai Mazar, Uri Davidovich, with an Appendix by Arlette David

Abstract: Tel Reḥov, identified with Reḥob, was one of the largest Canaanite cities in the southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age (15th–13th centuries b.c.e.). Unlike many other Canaanite settlements, the city was founded in the 15th century after a hiatus beginning in Early Bronze Age III. In this article, four major Late Bronze Age occupation strata are described. Notable is a monumental structure dated to the 14th century b.c.e. with unusual architectural features that could be either the residence of a high-ranking family or an administrative building. During the 13th century b.c.e., this building was replaced by a new structure containing a metalsmith’s workshop, inspired by Egyptian 19th Dynasty techniques, while later building phases belong to the final stages of the Late Bronze Age. No destruction layers were found, and the Late Bronze Age city was rebuilt and continued to thrive throughout the Iron Age I. Five Late Bronze Age plaque figurines, some of particular interest, are also described. An appendix discusses a rare funerary scarab of an Egyptian high official found in the 14th-century b.c.e. edifice.

An Eighth-Century b.c.e. Gate Shrine at Tel Lachish, Israel

By: Saar Ganor, Igor Kreimerman

Abstract: Excavations conducted on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority at Tel Lachish exposed the southern half of the six-chambered gate in Level III. In the eastern chamber, a gate shrine was uncovered. The shrine was split in two: a larger northern room and a smaller southern room. The southern room, which served as the holy of holies, had a niche in its southern wall in front of which a double altar was placed. Dozens of bowls and oil lamps were revealed inside the shrine. At some point, evidently prior to the destruction of Level III by Sennacherib in 701 b.c.e., the shrine was desecrated and sealed. This act was evident in the breakage of the altar’s horns and the placement of a latrine in the holy of holies. The available data suggests that the desecration of the shrine should be associated with Hezekiah’s cultic reform (2 Kgs 18:4).

British Journal of Political Science (Volume 49, Issue 2)

A Manifesto, in 140 Characters or Fewer: Social Media as a Tool of Rebel Diplomacy

By: Benjamin T. Jones, Eleonora Mattiacci

Abstract: Can rebel organizations in a civil conflict use social media to garner international support? This article argues that the use of social media is a unique form of public diplomacy through which rebels project a favorable image to gain that support. It analyzes the Libyan civil war, during which rebels invested considerable resources in diplomatic efforts to gain US support. The study entails collecting original data, and finds that rebel public diplomacy via Twitter increases co-operation with the rebels when their message (1) clarifies the type of regime they intend to create and (2) emphasizes the atrocities perpetrated by the government. Providing rebels with an important tool of image projection, social media can affect dynamics in an ever more connected international arena.

Comparative Studies in Society and History (Volume 61, Issue 2)

Archived Voices, Acoustic Traces, and the Reverberations of Kurdish History in Modern Turkey

By: Marlene Schäfers

Abstract: This article investigates how middle-aged to elderly Kurdish women in Turkey engage with large collections of Kurdish music recordings in their possession. Framing them as archives, women mobilize these collections as central elements in a larger, ongoing Kurdish project of historical critique, which seeks to resist hegemonic state narratives that have long denied and marginalized Kurdish voices. While recognizing the critical intervention such archives make, the article contends that, to be heard as “history” with a legitimate claim to authority, subaltern voices often have to rely on the very hegemonic forms, genres, and discourses they set out to challenge. This means that subaltern projects of historical critique walk a fine line between critique and complicity, an insight that nuances narratives that would approach subaltern voices predominantly from a perspective of resistance. At the same time, this article argues that a more complete picture of subaltern archives requires us to attend to the voices they contain not just as metaphors for resistance or political representation but also as acoustic objects that have social effects because of the way they sound. By outlining the affective qualities that voice recordings held for the Kurdish women who archived them, the article shows how their collections participated in carving out specific, gendered subject positions as well as forging a broader Kurdish sociality. Paying attention to history's “acoustic register” (Hunt 2008), this suggests, promises to open up perspectives on subaltern historiography that go beyond binary frameworks of resistance and domination, critique and complicity.

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (Volume 39, Issue 1)

Introduction: The Global Middle East in the Age of Speed From Joyriding to Jamming, and from Racing to Raiding

By: Simon Jackson

Abstract: This essay introduces a special section dedicated to examining the history and culture of automobility, considering a quartet of essays on Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya and Algeria, and Syria. Jumping off from the work of Palestinian artist Jumana Manna to examine the motor vehicle as a multifaceted and ambiguous site of social experience and analytical possibility, the essay then sets the four essays that compose the section into the extant literature.

Gridlock Politics: Auto(im)mobility in Sadat's Egypt

By: On Barak

Abstract: Anwar Sadat's “open door” policy involved the forceful promotion of an American-inspired car society. This essay traces the development of Egypt's motorscape by recounting the first eight decades of automobility in Egypt. Focusing on the 1970s, it suggests that the increasing number of vehicles on the road and consequent congestion were the result, and apparently also the driving force, of politics at every level: from class and gender to geopolitics. In particular, the adoption of the car during the infitah was informed by a discourse of demographic and urban crisis that it was meant to solve yet actually aggravated. Contrasting the private car to the public bus—and stressing zahma, population control, and regulation of sexuality—brought to the fore gendered aspects of automobility and especially sexual harassment rather than issues such as energy efficiency, traffic accidents, and environmental pollution, which would describe the car as the more dangerous vehicle. This contextualization helped neutralize the immoral connotations cars carried over from the prerevolutionary era. Against this background, Egypt's motorscape was partitioned into public and private, dangerous and safe, humiliating and respectable, in a way that made the bus stand for all the former connotations and the car for all the latter.

Learning from Riyadh: Automobility, Joyriding, and Politics

By: Pascal Menoret

Abstract: What can we learn from Riyadh? What does this massive desert capital teach us about cities that other, better-studied places don't? This article examines the making of one of the most salient characteristics of Riyadh: its carscape. In 2000, 93 percent of all daily trips in Riyadh were done by private car, 5 percent were done by taxi, and 2 percent were done by collective transit, which means that private or hired cars were used in 98 percent of all 5 million daily trips in the city. The city looks today like a geometric, far-flung suburb crisscrossed by large highways and spotted with bouquets of high rises. Instead of developing around one central core in a contiguous manner, Riyadh grew around the massive usage of cars. Why and how did the suburbanization of Riyadh happen? How did Saudi automobility become the overwhelming social and political structure it is now?

From Camel to Truck?: Automobiles and the Pastoralist Nomadism of Syrian Tribes during the French Mandate (1920–46)

By: Mehdi Sakatni

Abstract: A conventional view of nomadic tribes is that motorization—the passage from animal to automobile transportation—brought about the transformation and eventually the obliteration of the nomadic pastoralist lifestyle in the long twentieth century. But through the example of nomadic tribes in French mandate Syria, this essay shows that creative appropriation of the automobile actually helped nomadic groups to strengthen their position and to defend their economic and political interests. Automobiles allowed tribal chiefs to experience enhanced mobility, facilitating a faster connection between the bulk of the tribe and the towns. Nomads could thereby reliably sell their livestock and products more easily. Motorcars also presented nomads with a new weapon with which to challenge the technical hegemony commonly associated with colonial power. Consequently, it forced mandate authorities to adapt and transform their own ways of policing and controlling the steppe to counter the pioneering use of cars by armed Bedouins. Last, it enabled tribal chiefs to gain social prestige and, therefore, to assert themselves as ruling elites in the soon-to-be-born independent state. Overall, the Syrian nomads should be seen as pioneers of automobile culture at the start of the global Fordist period, rather than as its victims.

Critical Review (Volume 31, Issue 1)

Ideas, Ideology, and the Roots of the Islamic State

By: Mohammad Fadel

Abstract: The ideals that gave rise to Daesh are not so much those of pre-modern Sunni Islam, including Salafism, as they are the ideals that post-colonial Arab states have propagated since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In contravention to long-established ideals of Islamic law, post-colonial Arab states have attempted to legitimate their own despotisms through a formal commitment to a certain kind of Islamic normativity. Inasmuch as Islam provides a ready political discourse to resist despotism, it is unsurprising that pan-Arab “Islamist” movements have made resistance to despotism their central concern. Daesh, however, rejects the anti-despotic politics of modern pan-Arab and “Islamist” political movements and instead offers a despotic and apocalyptic religious conception of the political that is as far from the Sunni mainstream as the political despotisms of the post-colonial Arab states. In this respect, there is a deep synergy between Daesh and the despotisms of the modern Arab state, both of which portray themselves as the only alternative to the murderous tyranny of the other. The only long-term solution to Daesh, therefore, is reform of the despotisms of the post-colonial Arab states.

Dangerous Ideas: The Force of Ideology and Personality in Driving Radicalization

By: Steffen Hertog

Abstract: Graeme Wood’s The Way of the Strangers gets as close as is humanly possible to an ethnography of recruiters and sympathizers of the Islamic State. Contrary to much writing on radical Islamism, Wood convincingly shows that the Islamic State’s ideas—rooted in a literalist reading of ancient Islamic sources—are central in motivating many of the movement’s followers. His accounts of individual adherents also suggests, however, that ideas are not the only factor, as certain personality traits influence who is attracted to radical Islamist movements.

Do Religious Ideas Cause Violence?

By: Mark Juergensmeyer

Abstract: Social science seldom takes religion seriously. Graeme Wood shows the folly of this neglect in The Way of the Strangers, his portrayal of the apocalyptic religious ideas held by some of the most ardent ISIS followers. The actions and devotion of members of the Islamic State cannot be understood without grasping what Wood is telling us. Still, a central question remains: Do these religious ideas inevitably lead to violence? Here the jury is still out, since a focus solely on religion, without the socio-political context, can give a skewed perspective on the motives of this violent politico-religious movement.

Knowing and Not Knowing ISIS

By: J. Judd Owen

Abstract: Graeme Wood’s The Way of the Strangers suggests that many scholars have denied or downplayed the Islamic State’s own account of its emphatically religious foundation. This tendency is heir to the Enlightenment strategy of defanging illiberal religion by claiming that only religions conforming to liberal principles are genuinely religious—raising anew questions that arose at the dawn of liberalism, in the wake of the Wars of Religion.

ISIS and Ideology: Reply to Fadel, Hertog, Juergensmeyer, and Owen

By: Graeme Wood

Abstract: My critics and I agree that ideology is understudied, though I think it is the most important factor while they reserve a lesser role for it. Hertog’s analysis of personality traits is suggestive and valuable, though it illuminates a path that leads to the Islamic State's ideology (but also to other, perhaps less dangerous places) rather than to its violence. Owen correctly identifies the challenge the Islamic State – and other forms of revivalist religion – pose for Lockean toleration. Fadel's swerve toward an “ideology” of Arab despotism is a diversion. Juergensmeyer rightly notes parallel forms of violence in other traditions, and his analysis of the role of social conditions is partly shared by ISIS supporters themselves.

Critical Studies on Terrorism (Volume 12, Issue 2)

Terrorist violence and the enrollment of psychology in predicting Muslim extremism: critical terrorism studies meets critical algorithm studies

By: Flagg Miller

Abstract: Discourse on terrorist violence has long facilitated an especially liberal form of securitisation. Originally evoked in reference to anarchists and communists, a rational consideration of terrorist violence, inaugurated by the concept, asks for deferred judgement about the nature of, or reasons behind, violence related to terror on the premise that state and international legal norms governing the legitimate use of violence fail to circumscribe the proper capacities of the state to regulate and explain terrorism. Where sovereign powers along with their military and civilian instruments of coercion are deemed unable to regulate violence effectively, analysts of terrorist violence and their readership are invited to consider and cultivate new sensibilities. Beginning in the 1980s, studies by psychologists found renewed urgency among a growing cadre of interdisciplinary terror experts who found religion, Islam especially, a key variable of analysis. I situate their contributions in a longer history of secular and racialising discourse about terrorist violence. Central to this history are practices of reading, translating, interpreting and archiving texts. Evidence for the argument is based on the analysis of an algorithm that allegedly predicts the likelihood of terrorist strikes by counting words spoken by al-Qaʿida leaders and correlating their frequency with over 30 psychological categories.

Pursuing the allure of combat: an ethnography of violence amongst Iraqi Shi’I combatants fighting ISIS

By: Younes Saramifar

Abstract: The social sciences speak of violence through its meaning, performances, manifestations and representations; however, the inner workings of violence are less explored. In order to suggest a different mode of seeing violence, I explore the inner workings of violence through the pleasures of and fun among Shi’i volunteer combatants. I apply Walter Benjamin’s motion of pure means to explain how violence becomes self-referential and non-representational via combat-zone ethnography amongst Iraqi Shi’i militants who fought against ISIS in Iraq. I address the fine line between pleasure and fun in order to highlight the inner workings of violence during combat and to encourage a fresh bottom-up anthropological perspective in assessing the parameters of the persistence and resilience of volunteer combatants. My approach advocates moving beyond recruitment and ideological interpolation by questioning the allure of combat through an ontological framework that includes combatants’ perspectives and narratives.

Blurring European and Islamic values or brightening the good – bad Muslim dichotomy? A critical analysis of French Muslim victims of Jihadi terror online on twitter and in Le Monde newspaper

By: Joseph Downing

Abstract: Victimhood remains under analysed in the Critical Terrorism Studies literature, including the abilities of Muslim victims of terror attacks to blurring social boundaries and possibly de-securitise Muslims in Europe. This is of specific importance in France, which has not only suffered the most terror incidents in Europe in the past five years but also is a country where Muslims have been securitised for decades. This paper uses a mixed methods approach to analyse twitter data for the #jesuisahmed hashtag used to commemorate the Muslim police officer killed in the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and the le monde online memorials created in the wake of the Paris and Nice terror attacks. This analysis demonstrates French Muslim victimhood attacks blur Muslim social boundaries, influences the way that terror events are constructed and also present opportunities for the de-securitisation of Muslims in France. Muslim victimhood does this through three key themes – Muslims being situated as defenders of European values on twitter, Muslim biographies demonstrating “banality” in the le monde online memories and visual nuances of group identity through victim photos included in the le monde memorial. However, these narratives also can re-enforce a problematic good/bad Muslim dichotomy.

Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict (Volume 12, Issue 2)

Calculated contributors: IGO support for ethnopolitical organizations

By: Victor Asal, Lindsay Heger, Douglas M. Stinnett

Abstract: Why do some organizations representing ethnic minorities receive outside diplomatic support from intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)? This article analyses ethnopolitical organizations in the Middle East from 1980 to 2004. The analysis explores two different possible answers. First, IGOs are guided by normative principles and are inclined to support ethnopolitical organizations that have democratic characteristics. Second, IGOs are guided by practical concerns, and choose to support those organizations that have the most influence. Although the analysis finds evidence for both the normative and strategic views, the variables associated with the strategic view have a larger substantive effect on the probability of support.

Government and Opposition (Volume 54, Issue 2)

Global Shifts and the Limits of the EU’s Transformative Power in the European Periphery: Comparative Perspectives from Hungary and Turkey

By: Ziya Öniş, Mustafa Kutlay

Abstract: This article highlights the weakening of the EU’s transformative capacity in the broader European periphery in a rapidly shifting global order, with reference to Hungary and Turkey. Although Hungary is an ‘insider’ and Turkey a relative ‘outsider’, their recent experiences display strikingly similar patterns, raising important concerns about the EU’s leverage. Under the influence of strong nationalist-populist leaders backed by powerful majorities, both countries have been moving in an increasingly illiberal direction, away from well-established EU norms. The article proposes an analytical framework based on a combination of push and pull factors that are driven by changing global political economy dynamics, which explains the EU’s declining appeal in its periphery, not only in reference to the internal dynamics of European integration and its multiple crises, but also the appeal of illiberal versions of strategic capitalism employed by rising powers, which serve as reference points for the elites of several states in diverse geographic settings.

International Affairs (Volume 95, Issue 2)

The calypso caliphate: how Trinidad became a recruiting ground for ISIS

By: Simon Cottee

Abstract: Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), a small twin-island republic in the Caribbean, has one of the highest rates of foreign fighter radicalization in the western hemisphere. According to official estimates, around 130 Trinidadian nationals migrated to ISIS-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq between 2013 and 2016. This article seeks to make sense of these migrations, placing them in the broader historical and social context in which they occurred. Drawing on a range of quantitative and qualitative primary source material, the article finds, contrary to expectation, that the archetypal adult ISIS traveller from T&T is not a marginalized, youthful and mostly male city dweller who radicalized outside of a mosque, but is in fact as likely to be female, in his or her mid-30s, married, have children, attend a mosque, live in a rural area, and have suffered neither the pains of economic hardship nor the ill effects of marginalization from the wider society because of his or her Muslim identity. As well as emphasizing the intersection between the local and the global in jihadist foreign traveller mobilization, the article also demonstrates the importance of personal connections in the migrations of Trinidadians to Syria and Iraq, lending further support to research on the centrality of social networks in facilitating radicalization and foreign fighter mobilization.

Targeting infrastructure and livelihoods in the West Bank and Gaza

By: Erika Weinthal; Jeannie Sowers

Abstract: State and non-state actors across many protracted conflicts and prolonged occupations in the Middle East and North Africa have systematically targeted civilian infrastructures. We use the cases of the West Bank and Gaza, characterized by more than five decades of occupation and periods of intermittent violent conflict, to analyse how the targeting of water, energy, and agricultural infrastructures has created humanitarian crises and undermined civilian livelihoods. Our analysis draws upon an original database tracking the targeting of environmental and civilian infrastructures and on interviews with humanitarian organizations, government officials and civil society actors. The analysis shows how the targeting of infrastructure has differed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, damage to essential infrastructure and restrictions on infrastructure development are forms of slow violence that accumulate over time, carried out by both state authorities and settlers. In the Gaza Strip, recurrent violent conflict between Israel and Hamas has produced extensive destruction across all types of infrastructure, while the internationally-sanctioned blockade has hindered effective reconstruction. In both cases agriculture is the most frequently targeted sector, undermining livelihoods and connections to land, while damage to water and energy systems has limited economic activity and rendered civilian life increasingly precarious.

Iran's Syria strategy: the evolution of deterrence  

By: Hassan Ahmadian; Payam Mohseni

Abstract: Iran has been a critical player in the Syrian war since 2011, crafting a complex foreign policy and military strategy to preserve its Syrian ally. What have been the drivers of Iranian decision-making in this conflict? And how has Iranian strategy evolved over the course of the war? This article argues that the logic of deterrence has been fundamental not just for shaping the contours of Iran–Syria relations since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but also for determining the overall trajectory of Iranian strategy in the Syrian war. The authors outline Iran's decision-making calculus and divide the country's strategy on Syria after the Arab Spring into four primary phases: 1) a ‘Basij’ strategy to establish local militias in Syria; 2) a regionalization strategy to incorporate transnational fighters and militias in the war effort; 3) an internationalization strategy to incorporate Russia and balance the United States; and 4) a post-ISIS deterrence strategy to balance against the United States, Turkey and Israel. Iran's Syria strategy progressively escalated in response to the possible defeat of its ally and the deterioration of its forward deterrence capacities against the United States and Israel. Today, the potential for direct inter-state conflict is rising as proxy warfare declines and Iran attempts to maintain the credibility of its forward deterrence.

International Political Science Review (Volume 40, Issue 2)

United Nations electoral assistance: More than a fig leaf?

By: Anna Lührmann

Abstract: Between 2007 and 2014 the United Nations (UN) assisted more than one-third of all national elections worldwide. Its experts routinely provide substantial technical advice on election management, logistical support such as the procurement of ballot papers and financial assistance. However, it remains doubtful if, and under which conditions, such assistance contributes to free and fair elections or has a positive long-term impact on democratization. This study assesses the impact of UN electoral assistance (UNEA) in Sudan, Nigeria and Libya. It finds that such assistance contributed to election quality in the presence of regime elites prioritizing electoral credibility in Nigeria (2011) and Libya (2012). In Nigeria, it seems plausible that UNEA had a medium-term impact on democratization. However, if regime elites undermine electoral freedom and fairness – as in Sudan (2010) – such positive effects are unlikely. Furthermore, in such contexts, the involvement of the UN may legitimize authoritarian practices.

International Politics (Volume 56, Issues 2 & 3)

‘The problem with refugees’: international protection and the limits to solidarity

By: Kelly Staples

Abstract: This article demonstrates the ambiguity of solidarity as articulated in the European Union’s 2015 relocation schemes for persons in need of international protection. These schemes are shown in turn to reflect the wider limits to solidarity when it comes to the location of people in need of protection. The article also argues that in International Relations theory, the present limits to solidarity are still often either reified or denied, which limits in turn our ability to understand the ethics of global problems and interventions. The final section of the article sketches out a via media which collapses—rather than bridges—the ‘real’ and the ‘ideal’ and which might better serve our understanding of the ethics of difficult problems like the refugee ‘problem’.

Resisting securitized and militarized understandings of protection: aesthetics as counterpower

By: Jenny H. Peterson

Abstract: Tracing the development of modern understandings of the ‘politics of protection,’ this paper examines the paradoxical reality of the use of violence by states to build peace, protect civilians and provide humanitarian assistance. It presents the mechanisms through which a dominant liberal-realist ideology based on securitized and militarized options have come to dominate global understandings of how to protect civilian populations at risk and thus shaped public and political imagination over what is possible and moral in the realm of protection. However, the imaginative dominance of these ideologically based modes of protection can and are being challenged through processes of ‘aesthetic imaginative acts.’ These acts are a form of counterpower that create fissures in the liberal-realist narrative and in turn enable populations to reconfigure political imagination to include alternative, empathetic responses to humanitarian crises. Analysis of one modality of ‘aesthetic imaginative acts’ in one case, namely musical recordings by Canadian artists in response to the Syrian refugee crisis, will be analyzed in relation to how they challenge the dominant liberal-realist imagination and facilitate a broader, nonviolent or empathetic imagination regarding protection.

Leveraging interregionalism: EU strategic interests in Asia, Latin America and the Gulf region

By: Katharina Luise Meissner

Abstract: The European Union’s (EU) use of interregionalism in its foreign policy is longstanding. This also translated into trade negotiations with regional organizations: the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Yet, the EU waived interregionalism in favor of bilateralism in negotiations with ASEAN and CAN, while it maintained interregionalism toward the GCC. Why is this so? Investigating the EU’s strategic interests in these regions, the article argues that geoeconomics drove the negotiations with ASEAN and CAN, while political interests in counterbalancing the USA and China motivated the negotiations with the GCC. Thus, in the first two cases, the EU sacrificed interregionalism for an ambitious trade agreement, whereas with the GCC it maintained interregionalism although this prevented the conclusion of an eventual agreement. Leveraging interviews with EU officials, this article provides a nuanced perspective on strategic interests in interregionalism.

International Studies Review (Volume 21, Issue 1)

Comparative Exceptionalism: Universality and Particularity in Foreign Policy Discourses  

By: Nicola Nymalm; Johannes Plagemann

Abstract: Existing research on exceptionalism in foreign policy suggests a number of confrontational features making it a threat to peaceful international relations. Largely based on US and European cases, and hardly ever taking a comparative approach, this literature overlooks a variety of exceptionalisms in non-Western countries, including so called “rising powers” such as China and India. A comparison between exceptionalist foreign policy discourses of the United States, China, India, and Turkey shows that exceptionalism is neither exclusive to the United States, nor a “new” phenomenon within rising powers, nor necessarily confrontational, unilateralist, or exemptionalist. As a prerequisite for comparative work, we establish two features common to all exceptionalist foreign policy discourses. In essence, such discourses are informed by supposedly universal values derived from a particular civilization heritage or political history. In order to systematize different versions of exceptionalism, we then propose four ideal types, each of which reflects exceptionalism's common trait of a claim to moral superiority and uniqueness but diverges across other important dimensions, with implications for its potentially offensive character. The article concludes by formulating a research agenda for future comparative work on exceptionalist foreign policy discourses and their repercussions for great power relations and global politics.

Journal of Development Studies (Volume 55, Issue 5)

In the Same Boat, but not Equals: The Heterogeneous Effects of Parental Income on Child Labour

By: Fatma Romeh M. Ali

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of parental income on child labour. The empirical literature has found conflicting results regarding whether poverty leads parents to send their children to work. Most of this literature, however, treats child labourers as a single homogeneous group, ignoring differences among working children in work intensity, hazard exposure, and type of employer. This paper argues that accounting for the heterogeneity in child’s working conditions may explain the conflicting results in the literature. Specifically, the existence of this heterogeneity may reflect heterogeneity in parents’ perceptions about the returns to child’s work, and hence in parental reasons to send their children to work. To test this hypothesis, I estimate the effects of parental income on child labour for various working conditions, using data from the 2010 Egypt National Child Labour Survey. This dataset provides rich information on the working conditions of child labourers. The findings show that the effect of parental income on child labour is minimal among children who work in non-hazardous jobs, jobs that are not highly physical, or in family businesses. In contrast, higher parental income does decrease the likelihood of child labour in market work, jobs that are physical and hazardous jobs.

Journal of Economic Literature (Volume 57, Issue 1)

Review Essay on Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies by Claire Adida, David Laitin and Marie-Anne Valfort

By: Thierry Verdier

Abstract: This paper reviews the book Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies by Claire Adida, David Laitin and Marie-Anne Valfort (hereafter, ALV), providing an analytical perspective on the issues related to minority discrimination and integration in a host society. Building upon the sociological and recent economic approaches to cultural integration, we highlight the different mechanisms behind the existence of a discriminatory equilibrium between a majority group and a minority group in a given social context. The paper then discusses the specific case of the Muslim minority groups in the French context and outlines the strengths and limitations of the research approach expanded by ALV. We finally consider the policy proposals provided by ALV, assessing their viability, as well as the dynamic political economy constraints they might face in a Christian-heritage society.

Journal of Islamic Studies (Volume 30, Issue 2)

Joseph Morgan and Mohamed Rabadan: the first Muslim Biography of the Prophet Muhammad in English

By: Nabil Matar

Abstract: By the time Joseph Morgan died (ca. 1750), he had lived longer in, and written more about, North Africa than any other Briton. This paper examines his first published work after his return to England ca. 1720: a translation of the life of the Prophet Muḥammad which appeared in London in 1723 and 1725. While there had been previous biographies of the Prophet in English, Morgan’s was the first that was completely based on an account by a Muslim Andalusian author, Mohamed Rabadan, who had written it in the first decade of the seventeenth century. It was partly based on the work of the thirteenth-century muḥaddith, Abū al-Ḥasan Aḥmad al-Bakrī and infused with Sufi imagery. This biography presented a highly positive view of the Prophet, the like of which had not existed before in any European language.

The Emergence of a Bosnian Learned Elite: A Case of Ottoman Imperial Integration

By: Ayelet Zoran-Rosen

Abstract: This article traces the establishment of a network of educational institutions, and the accompanying consolidation of a class of learned men, with varying levels of Islamic education, in sixteenth-century Bosnia. It explores the ways in which these developments affected Bosnia’s integration into the imperial Ottoman education network. Analysis of the creation of this local network and its effects is done through prosopographical study of two sample groups of Ottoman scholars: first, scholars who studied or worked in Sarajevo in the sixteenth century; and, second, Ottoman scholars who originated from Bosnia. The samples were created using sixteenth-century biographical dictionaries. By following these scholars’ careers and highlighting their recurring characteristics, this article lays out the rise of Bosnia, especially Sarajevo, in the broader Ottoman scholarly network throughout the sixteenth century. It explains the implications that this rise had on the Ottoman education system in general, and on Muslim life in Sarajevo in particular, and argues that this process was essential for Bosnia’s successful and long-lasting integration into the Ottoman Empire. It also locates the establishment of a Muslim education system and the creation of a learned elite in sixteenth-century Bosnia in the context of the larger process of the Sunnitization of Ottoman society.

Salafism’s Historical Continuity: The Reception of ‘Modernist’ Salafis by ‘Purist’ Salafis in Jordan  

By: Joas Wagemakers

Abstract: Academics do not agree on the historical continuity between ‘modernist’ Salafis from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and today's ‘purist’ ones. Interestingly, little attention has been paid to how the latter deal with this issue. This article seeks partly to fill this gap by analysing the reception of ‘modernist’ Salafis in the work of Jordanian ‘purist’ Salafis. It first provides background information on the history of ‘purist’ Salafism in Jordan, with a specific focus on the Syrian-Jordanian scholar Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (1914–1999). It then moves on to analyse the perception of ‘modernist’ Salafi scholars by al-Albānī and the politically quietist branch of ‘purist’ Salafism in Jordan. Next, it deals with the political branch of the ‘purist’ Salafis in the Kingdom and the way they have perceived ‘modernist’ Salafis. Finally, in the conclusion I link the topic of this article to the debate about the historical continuity between ‘modernist’ and ‘purist’ Salafis.

Journal of Near Eastern Studies (Volume 78, Issue 1)

A New Historical Inscription of Sargon II from Karkemish

By: Gianni Marchesi

Abstract: Not available

A Syriac-Arabic Dream-Request and Its Jewish Tradition

By: Michael Zellmann-Rohrer

Abstract: Not available

The Armenian Plant Names ananux and nni, and Persian na’nā’ and nānxvāh

By: Sona Davtyan

Abstract: Not available

Curious Characters, Invented Scripts, and … Charlatans? “Pseudo-Scripts” in the Mesopotamian Magic Bowls

By: Daniel James Waller

Abstract: Not available

Journal of the American Oriental Society (Volume 139, Issue 1)

Persian in Arabic Poetry: Identity Politics and Abbasid Macaronics

By: Lara Harb

Abstract: Notable examples of macaronics, the insertion of foreign vocabulary into poetry, are attributed to the well-known eighth-century poet, Abū Nuwās, who experimented with mixing Persian in his Arabic poetry but whose motivation remains unclear. This article looks at a selection of his and other macaronic verses ranging from the seventh to tenth centuries and argues that Persian was inserted deliberately as a marker of a Persian identity, standing for the “foreign Other.” Far from being a sign of a pro-Persian shuʿūbī sentiment, the employment of Persian only reinforces the established hierarchy of the two identities in that period. By the tenth century, however, this hierarchy is cleverly flipped on its head in a macaronic poem by the popular Iraqi poet, Ibn al-Ḥajjāj While many of the examples are comic and even obscene in character, this article shows that the employment of Persian in Arabic poetry was a deliberate practice with serious and meaningful implications.

The Opening Formula and Witness Clauses in Arabic Legal Documents from the Early Islamic Period

By: Geoffrey Khan

Abstract: Arabic legal documents from early Islamic Egypt are attested in Arabic papyrus collections. These exhibit a formulaic structure that is clearly distinct from those of the Byzantine Greek tradition of legal documents, which continued to be written in the first Islamic century. The Islamic Arabic documents reflect a legal formulaic tradition that had its origins in the Ḥijāz of Arabia. This article examines the background of this Ḥijāzī tradition, with particular focus on the opening formula and the witness clauses. Parallel features are identified in Ancient South Arabian legal texts and in texts of a legal nature from Northern Arabia.

The Personal Pronoun in Christian Palestinian Aramaic

By: Tarsee Li

Abstract: The present study consists of a description of the functions of the personal pronoun attested in the Christian Palestinian Aramaic Gospels. Inferences are drawn from the way the pronoun is employed in the translation of various Greek grammatical expressions and from comparing the instances of some Aramaic expressions that can occur with or without the pronoun.

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (Volume 62, Issue 2-3)

Muslim-style Mausolea across Mongol Eurasia: Religious Syncretism, Architectural Mobility and Cultural Transformation

By: Sheila Blair

Abstract: The first Mongol khans were buried in hidden graves, but later Mongols adopted the Muslim practice of building aboveground domed tombs. This essay examines three domed mausolea typical of the Muslim lands erected in the early to mid-14th century in different Mongol khanates—that built for the Ilkhan Öljeitü at Sultaniyya, a second for the Chaghadaid Buyan Quli Khan outside Bukhara, and a third anonymous tomb at Guyuan, Hebei, in the Yuan territories of north China—to show how different Mongol patrons interpreted the same form and funerary traditions associated with it.

Reflections on the Islamization of Mongol Khans in Comparative Perspective

By: Peter Jackson

Abstract: This paper compares the process of Islamization in the three westernmost Mongol states: the Chaghadaid Khanate in Central Asia; the Ilkhanate in Iran and Iraq; and the Jochid ulus (the Golden Horde) in the Pontic-Caspian steppes and the Volga region. It explores in greater depth the hallmarks of conversion, the agents of, and the motives for, Islamization and the limitations of its effects on royal policy. In particular, it highlights the tension between Islamic notions and the concept of religious pluralism that was central to the corpus of Mongol law (Yasa) established by Chinggis Khan.

The Maritime and Continental Networks of Kīsh Merchants under Mongol Rule: The Role of the Indian Ocean, Fārs and Iraq

By: Yasuhiro Yokkaichi

Abstract: Based on a variety of literary and archaeological sources, notably the tariff lists produced in Rasulid Yemen, this study reconstructs the trade routes of the Kīsh merchants, demonstrating that the Persian Gulf route—between South and West India (Coromandel, Malabar, and Gujarat) and Iraq via the Persian Gulf—and the Red Sea route—between South and West India and Egypt via the Red Sea—were closely connected in the Mongol period. This not only manifests aspects of the proto-globalization in Mongol Eurasia but also argues against the supposed economic decline of post-1258 Baghdad and the economic centrality of Cairo in the post-Abbasid Muslim world.

Libraries, Books, and Transmission of Knowledge in Ilkhanid Baghdad

By: Michal Biran

Abstract: The destruction of the Baghdadi libraries has been a powerful image connected to the Mongol conquest of 1258, often claimed to have precipitated the decline of Muslim civilization. This study, however, challenges this claim by reconstructing the state of libraries in Ilkhanid Baghdad, revealing a thriving intellectual community. Based on a close reading in Arabic biographical dictionaries and analysis of samāʿ and book lists, it elucidates the functions of libraries in Ilkhanid Baghdad, identifies channels of knowledge transmission, and offers a glimpse of the libraries’ holdings. Finally, it analyzes the Mongols’ role in invigorating local scholarship and the impact their rule had on Baghdad’s intellectual life.

Journal of Palestine Studies (Volume 48, Issue 3)

Fracturing Communities: Aid Distribution in a Palestinian Refugee Camp

By: Perla Issa

Abstract: This article examines the practices of humanitarian aid distribution from the perspective of aid recipients rather than providers through an immersion in the daily home life of Palestinian residents of Nahr al-Barid refugee camp (north Lebanon) in 2011. It argues that in the name of distributing aid fairly, humanitarian aid providers put in place a pervasive system of surveillance to monitor, evaluate, and compare residents’ misery levels by relying on locally recruited aid workers. This regime of visibility was designed to be one directional; NGOs never disclosed how much aid they had available, nor when or how it would be distributed. The inclusion of local aid workers in this opaque framework turned a process that relied on community and neighborhood ties into an impersonal machine that fostered doubt and suspicion and ultimately hindered the community’s ability to engage in collective political action.

From Haifa to Ramallah (and Back): New/Old Palestinian Literary Topography

By: Amal Eqeiq

Abstract: This article explores border crossing and the Palestinian city as a literary metropolis—two major themes in the works of emerging Palestinian novelists in Israel. It looks at the “re-Palestinization” of urban space by writers who belong to a post-Oslo generation of Palestinian intellectuals that left villages and small towns in Israel to go and study, work, and live in the city. What distinguishes the literature of this generation is its negotiation of border crossing in a fragmented geography and its engagement with the city as a space of paradoxical encounter between a national imaginary and a settler-colonial reality. Based on a critical reading of their works, the article argues that Adania Shibli and Ibtisam Azem challenge colonial border discourse, exposing the ongoing Zionist erasure of the Palestinian city and creating a new topography for Palestinian literature. The article also traces the role of these writers in the “twinning” of Haifa and Ramallah starting in the late 1990s, and it examines how this literary and cultural “sisterhood” informs spatial resistance.

Middle East Critique (Volume 28, Issue 2)

ResurReaction: Competing Visions of Turkey’s (proto) Ottoman Past in Magnificent Century and Resurrection Ertuğrul

By: Josh Carney

Abstract: The Turkish TV dramas Magnificent Century and Resurrection Ertuğrul share a number of traits: Both reprise the country’s Ottoman (or proto-Ottoman) past by focusing their story on a heroic figure; both raised the ire of critics for their lack of historicity; and both have been highly successful, ruling ratings on the same competitive Wednesday night prime time slot, with Resurrection coming in to take Century’s place after that show left the air. Despite these similarities, the projects represent quite different takes on the Ottoman past and the issue of history’s role in the Turkish present. While Century arguably partakes in what Svetlana Boym calls reflective nostalgia, Resurrection is a highly restorative project. In this article, I detail the differences between these projects and explain their success in light of the shifting political environment in Turkey. I begin with a characterization of Century and the ‘problem’ it posed for a conservative government that was deeply invested in an idealized Ottoman past. I next turn to Resurrection, which I see as a government reaction to Century, and explain that it succeeds where other imitators failed due to the careful choice of a hero with a relatively blank historical slate. Finally, I argue that Resurrection practices a different attitude toward history than does Century, heralding for a government that not only seeks to glorify and idolize the past, but also to claim ownership of it.

Past Continuous: The Chronopolitics of Representation in Syrian Television Drama

By: Christa Salamandra

Abstract: Syria serves as a leading producer of the musalsal [dramatic miniseries], a key Arabic-language mass cultural form. With its dark realism and biting humor, Syrian drama has become a primary mode of sociopolitical commentary for both producers and audiences, given the restrictions on journalistic and academic expression and the absence of participatory politics in most Arab polities. Drama creators deploy a range of temporal strategies to comment on social and political conditions. A reflexive, intertextual chronopolitics runs through serials produced before and during the Syrian conflict that began in 2011. The question ‘what went wrong?’ preoccupies musalsal makers, and their works frequently foreground their belief that Syrian society is ‘going backwards.’ For example, in historical genres of television serials, idealized images harken back to perceived golden ages of cosmopolitanism, throwing the contemporary condition into bitter relief. Makers of dramas set in the present invert this technique, locating the sources of contemporary ills in past mistakes and historical injustices, revealed in flashback, dialogue, and voiceover. Through a technique of narrative allochrony, drama creators also highlight their understanding of modernity’s lapses, depicting select practices, mores, and attitudes as out of sync with what they see as contemporary values. These dramatic depictions of the past and present all point to a failed national project and a derailed modernity. Their creators seek to counter what they deem as a flawed political and social evolution, one that they believe has led to deterioration in the region and a devastating war in Syria.

Social Media Activism in Egyptian Television Drama: Encoding the Counter-Revolution Narrative

By: Gianluca P. Parolin

Abstract: Egyptian Ramadan TV series have explored the relationship between law and television in a number of iterations over the past few years. In 2017, the most watched production (115 million views on YouTube), Kalabsh, went one step further by examining the interaction between television broadcasting and social media in affecting the course of justice. Even though its events revolve around the framing and wrongful incrimination of a ‘good’ police officer, the dynamics suggest a not-so-subtle reference to the January 25, 2011 uprising. It portrayed social media actors as naïve agitators, outsmarted and used by those same dark networks of business and politics that they intend to expose and ultimately to unseat. This representation strengthens the counter-revolution’s narrative of the January 25 uprising as the making of some ‘Facebook kids’ [ʿiyāl bitūʿ il-face]. With Kalabsh, Egyptian TV series recalibrate the representation of the role of television broadcasting in affecting the course of justice and thus produce a new narrative that includes social media. This representation challenges as ‘optimistic’ the reading of the ‘democratic’ nature of social media by showing how its actors are even more prone to falling prey to mystifications and networks of corruption. The centrality of television broadcasting in affecting the course of justice clearly recedes in Kalabsh, but television broadcasting itself seems to regain some reputation.

Visualizing Inequality: The Spatial Politics of Revolution Depicted in Syrian Television Drama

By: Nour Halabi

Abstract:  This article analyzes how Syrian television drama is not only an important field of cultural expression and a site of contestation but also reveals the many socioeconomic spatial tensions underlying the 2011 Revolution and its aftermath. The latter aspect is demonstrated through a visual and textual analysis of two television serials that depict the ‘ashwa’iyat,

Red Death and Black Life: Media, Martyrdom and Shame

By: Esha Momeni

Abstract: Most of Iran’s urban population experienced the war with Iraq (1980–1988) through the burden of privation and the fear of possible airstrikes. Thus, state-produced media on national television became the main apparatus through which they connected their daily lives to the national conflict. Ravayat-e Fath [The Narrative of Triumph] was one docudrama, comprised of five seasons that the state produced at different intervals between 1984 and 1987. Although Ravayat-e Fath has been presented and received as a journalistic work, it enters the realm of fiction to fulfill its objective: To recruit soldiers. Through a collage of mythical stories, epic narratives, dramatic cinematography, mourning songs accompanied by reports from war fronts, and live interviews with soldiers, the series tells a story of a promised triumph through martyrdom. Through studying Ravayat-e Fath, the most important state-supported television production of the Iran-Iraq war era, this article investigates the ways in which war propaganda in general, and the concept of martyrdom in particular, generated tools like shaming to control the population during and after the war.

A Massacre Foretold: National Excommunication and Al-Gama’a

By: Walter Armbrust

Abstract: Al-Gama’a [The Society], a 28-part television biopic of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, was broadcast in the fall of 2010, just before the January 25, 2011 Revolution. The writer of the series, Wahid Hamid, was an important screenwriter for both television and the cinema and a figure known for his affinity with the state’s security apparatus. Al-Gama’a functioned as a rhetorical capstone for decades of anti-Brotherhood state discourse. It also powerfully anticipated the anti-Brotherhood apologetics used to rationalize the Rab‘a massacre of 2013, which effectively ended the revolution and cemented the coup by ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi against Muhammad Morsy. The series enacted a historical narrative that was almost completely absent from Egypt’s formal educational curriculum, thereby furthering a political agenda of dehumanizing Islamists and effectively excommunicating them from the national community. Hence in 2013, a thousand Egyptians were slaughtered in a day, and yet many of their fellow citizens saw the event as destiny rather than as a crime against humanity.

Middle East Report (Issue 290)

"The Globalized Unmaking of the Libyan State

By: Jacob Mundy

Abstract: Not available

Iraqibacter and the Pathologies of Intervention

By: Omar Dewachi

Abstract: Omar Dewachi traces the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria in war-related wounds—which US military doctors labelled Iraqibacter—to the biological legacy of decades of sanctions, war and intervention in Iraq, and how antibiotic resistance is increasingly being found in other militarized intervention zones in the region.

The Shifting Contours of US Power and Intervention in Palestine

By: Lisa Bhungalia, Jeannette Greven, Tahani Mustafa

Abstract: Lisa Bhungalia Jeannette Greven and Tahani Mustafa argue that the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign against the Palestinians—which gives Israel free reign to violently dispossess Palestinians while simultaneously withdrawing US aid for food, schools and hospitals—has both worsened Palestinian lives and has had the unintended consequence of weakening some levers of influence the United States holds over Palestinians.

Urban Interventions for the Wars Yet to Come

By: Hiba Bou Akar

Abstract: In a wide-ranging interview, Hiba Bou Akar shows how urban planning is being used to turn some neighborhoods and urban peripheries in the Middle East into militarized frontier zones between competing political, military and sectarian organizations guided by the dystopian logic of a war yet to come.

The Palestinian McCity in the Neoliberal Era

By: Sami Tayeb

Abstract: Sami Tayeb examines how a multitude of privately financed urban development projects in the Israeli-Occupied West Bank are creating a form of colonization that parallels that of Israel. Unlike Israel’s settler-colonial urbanism, however, this form of urban colonization is driven by global, and particularly neoliberal, capitalism, as it consumes Palestine’s remaining agrarian land at an unprecedented rate.

Humanitarian Crisis Research as Intervention

By: Sarah E. Parkinson

Abstract: Sarah Parkinson describes the growing popularity of extreme research—scholarly research conducted in crises zones amongst conflict-affected populations in the Middle East and North Africa—and shows how this research is a mode of intervention that can impose serious harm on individuals, communities, local partner universities and even humanitarian program staff.

The UAE and the Infrastructure of Intervention

By: Rafeef Ziadah

Abstract: Rafeef Ziadah investigates the rise of humanitarian logistics hubs such as Dubai International Humanitarian City, which, although ostensibly humanitarian, have become a key mechanism of intervention and increasingly a central element in the projection of power for the Gulf regimes such as the United Arab Emirates.

Israel’s Permanent Siege of Gaza

By: Ron Smith

Abstract: Not available

Border Regimes and the New Global Apartheid

By: Catherine Besteman 

Abstract: Catherine Besteman analyzes the new form of global intervention that is taking shape in the rise of militarized borders, interdictions at sea, detention centers, indefinite custody and the generalized criminalization of mobility around the world. The Global North—the United States, Canada, the European Union (EU), Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, the Gulf states and East Asia—is investing in militarized border regimes that reach far beyond particular territories to manage the movement of people from the Global South.

Oriens (Volume 47, Issue 1-2)

The Emergence of Verification (taḥqīq) in Islamic Medicine

By: Kamran I. Karimullah

Abstract: In this article, I discuss the legacy of Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine in Islamic medical commentary after 1100. I argue that Faḫr al-Dīn’s legacy lies in the exegetical practices, the method of verification (taḥqīq) he introduced into Islamic medical scholarship through his commentary on the Canon. I first argue that the features that characterise the method of verification in works such as Faḫr al-Dīn’s commentary on Avicenna’s Pointers and Reminders are present in the commentary on the Canon, even if Faḫr al-Dīn’s introduction to the latter work does not allude to these practices in the way that the introductions to his later works do. Based on an analysis of Galen’s prescription about exegetical best-practice in his Hippocratic commentaries and Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā al-Rāzī’s (d. ca. 925) introduction to Doubts on Galen, I argue next that Faḫr al-Dīn’s introduction of the verification method into the Islamic medical discourse was a watershed moment in the tradition. I use Ibn al-Quff’s (d. 1286) commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms to show how these methods were imitated by later medical commentators. This final section illustrates the enormous exegetical interest that the Canon of Medicine attracted, suggesting other promising trajectories for research into Faḫr al-Dīn’s medical legacy.

Oxford Development Studies (Volume 47, Issue 2)

Structural transformation in emerging economies: leading sectors and the balanced growth hypothesis

By: David Kucera, Xiao Jiang

Abstract: The paper uses the World Input-Output Database to address patterns of structural transformation in BRIC countries, Indonesia, South Korea, Mexico and Turkey. Sectoral drivers of aggregate labour productivity growth, and the relative importance of within-sector versus employment reallocation effects on aggregate labour productivity growth, are evaluated using growth accounting decomposition methods. Decomposition results are used to assess how patterns of structural transformation relate to macroeconomic performance in terms of aggregate labour productivity, output and employment growth. Together with the construction of ‘Hirschman compliance indices’, decomposition results are also used to shed light on the balanced versus unbalanced growth debates. The paper goes on to assess the extent of complementarities between manufacturing and information and communications technology-intensive advanced services through intermediate inputs, comparing the eight emerging countries with G7 countries over time.

Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture (Volume 24, Issue 1&2)

The Two-State Solution Remains the Only Pathway to a Mutually Agreed Resolution of the Conflict

By: Jake Walles

Abstract: Not available

The Future of the Two-State Solution and the Alternatives — A View from Gaza

By: Husam Dajni

Abstract: Not available

There Is No Other Solution

By: Shaul Arieli

Abstract: Not available

Is There a Plausible Alternative to The Two-State Solution?

By: Tony Klug

Abstract: Not available

Facing the Deep Crisis: How Will the Palestinian Authority Meet the Challenges of the New Reality?

By: Samir HuleiIeh

Abstract: Not available

One State, Two Nations

By: Gideon Levy

Abstract: Not available

What Can the International Community Do to Stop Creeping Annexation and Revive the Two-State Paradigm

By: Ziad AbuZayyad

Abstract: Not available

International Law, Settlements and the Two-State Solution

By: James Friedberg

Abstract: Not available

Role of Public Opinion in the Resilience/Resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

By: Khalil Shikaki, Dahlia Scheindlin

Abstract: Not available

Acknowledging the (Violent) Elephant in the Room

By: Menachem Klein

Abstract: Not available

Is the Two-State Solution Feasible?

By: Bernard Sabella

Abstract: Not available

What after the Deal of the Century?

By: Efraim Inbar

Abstract: Not available

A Trilateral Confederation

By: Hanna Siniora

Abstract: Not available

Is the Two-State Solution Still Applicable?

By: Alon Liel

Abstract: Not available

Annexation and the End of the Two-State Solution

By: Michael Lynk

Abstract: Not available

Partnership, Not Separation, Is the Answer

By: Meron Rapoport

Abstract: Not available

A Paradigm Shift from Two-State to One-State Solution

By: Manuel Hassassian

Abstract: Not available

The History of the Two-State Solution

By: Galia Golan

Abstract: Not available

How Can the Two-State Solution Be Rescued?

By: Cary Nelson

Abstract: Not available

The Ethics of Partition

By: Assaf Sharon

Abstract: Not available

Confederation: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?  

By: Paul Scham

Abstract: Not available

Political Studies (Volume 67, Issue 2)

The Politics of Decolonisation and Bi-Nationalism in Israel/Palestine

By: Bashir Bashir, Rachel Busbridge

Abstract: Recent years have seen a revitalisation of decolonisation as a framework of analysis in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This article maps changes in the meanings attached to decolonisation in the Israeli Israeli–Palestinian context, paying particular attention to the one-state paradigm. One-state proposals highlight bi-national realities in historic Palestine in order to lay out a decolonising vision grounded in equal civic rights. Many one-state advocates, however, are suspicious of a prescriptive bi-national paradigm that would afford the two national groups equal collective rights, primarily because its recognition of Jewish national self-determination is seen as entrenching, rather than decolonising, colonial relations of power. We argue that a prescriptive bi-nationalism in fact offers rich resources for a decolonising project in Israel/Palestine that seeks to establish a polity based on the principles of justice and equality – come to terms with historical injustice and imagine alternative pasts, presents and futures based on Arab–Jewish relationships.

PS: Political Science & Politics (Volume 52, Issue 2)

The Grand National Assembly of Turkey: A Decline in Legislative Capacity

By: Omer Faruk Gençkaya

Abstract: Not available

Review of Middle East Economics and Finance (Volume 15, Issue 1)

The Nexus between Government Expenditure and Economic Growth: Evidence of the Wagner’s Law in Kuwait

By: Ali Ebaid, Zakaria Bahari

Abstract: This study is the first attempt to examine the validity of the Wagner’s law hypothesis by employing time-series data over the period from 1970 to 2015 in Kuwait. In this paper, the causal relationship between government expenditure and economic growth is tested by conducting the Granger non-causality test developed by (Toda, H. Y., and T. Yamamoto. 1995. “Statistical Inference in Vector Autoregressions with Possibly Integrated Processes.” Journal of Econometrics 66 (1): 225–250.) and (Dolado, J. J., and H. Lütkepohl. 1996. “Making Wald Tests Work for Cointegrated VAR Systems.” Econometric Reviews 15 (4): 369–386.). The empirical results support the unidirectional causality running from government spending to economic growth. This occurs only when real government expenditure per capita is a proxy for state activity and real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is a measure of economic growth. This implies that Wagner’s law does not apply for Kuwait’s economy, and the Keynesian proposition of government spending as a policy instrument that encourages and leads economic growth is supported by the data used.

Housing Prices and Money Demand: Empirical Evidence in Selected MENA Countries

By: Nadia Mbazia, Mouldi Djelassi

Abstract: This paper examines the links between housing and money empirically in a money demand framework for a panel of five Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries using quarterly data from 2007Q3 to 2014Q4 with the inclusion of house prices as a variable representing the developments in housing markets. We applied the Pool Mean Group Estimation technique to estimate the long-run and short-run dynamic relationships in money demand model. Empirical results provide the evidence that higher house prices lead to a rise in M2 demand in long-run and short-run estimations. This finding may explain the importance influence of the house price developments on monetary policy in MENA countries. The results confirm that the cross-country heterogeneity of money holdings is also connected with structural features of the housing market.

Service Trade Liberalization in Oman: International Commitments and Trade Performance

By: Houcine Boughanmi, Said Al-Riyami

Abstract: The service sector constitutes an important and a growing sector of the global economy as well as in the Arab region. In Oman, the service sector accounts for the highest share in the sectoral composition of the GDP and constitutes a crucial component of the overall policy of economic diversification. The objective of this paper is to investigate the extent of service trade liberalization in Oman as reflected in its international trade commitments, and analyze its trade performance using an adapted version of the gravity model within the context of the wider Arab region. The analysis shows that Oman has the third most extensive GATS commitments in the Arab region, which have been consolidated and improved upon under USA–Oman FTA. Results from the gravity analysis indicate that WTO membership has a significant effect in enhancing service exports, while the variable US-FTA has a correct sign but a non-significant effect. Trade potential calculation shows that comparatively Oman has a quite significant export potential among the Arab countries indicating that it could potentially increase its exports more than what is actually traded. A trade liberalization scenario, in which countries reduce their trade restrictiveness index to the most liberal country in the region indicates that the GCC countries like Kuwait, Qatar and Oman would benefit the most from service liberalization with an increase in export values of, respectively, 89 %, 87 % and 75 % compared d to the base year.

Studies in Conflict &Terrorism (Volume 42, Issues 3 - 5)

Al Qaeda and the Islamic State's Break: Strategic Strife or Lackluster Leadership?

By: Tricia Bacon, Elizabeth Grimm Arsenault

Abstract: Employing counterfactuals to assess individual and systemic explanations for the split between Al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), this article concludes that individual leaders factor greatly into terrorist alliance outcomes. Osama bin Laden was instrumental in keeping Al Qaeda and ISIS allied as he prioritized unity and handled internal disputes more deftly than his successor, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. Although a troubled alliance, strategic differences between Al Qaeda and ISIS were not sufficient to cause the split. Rather, the capabilities of Al Qaeda's leader determined the group's ability to prevent alliance ruptures.

An Ethnographic Study on the Indonesian Immigrant Community and its Islamic Radicalization in South Korea

By: Minwoo Yun, Eunyoung Kim

Abstract: Contrary to popular belief, South Korea is not immune from the growth of Islamic radicalism. Although no serious terrorist attack has yet occurred within the country, some worrisome incidents have been reported. Recently, an Indonesian man was arrested on the grounds that he publicly supported the Al Nusra Front, a known Al Qaeda–affiliated terrorist organization, and even attempted to depart for Syria to join the organization. The current study is a response to such an incident. It investigates whether such an incident is an isolated exception or a harbinger of the Islamic radicalization process within South Korea, particularly within the Muslim immigrant community. The current study focuses primarily on the Indonesian immigrant community within South Korea but also investigates other Muslim communities when needed, as Muslim immigrant communities are often intermingled and share similar features. The study found some worrisome developments of Islamic radicalization within the Indonesian immigrant community in particular and the Muslim immigrant community in general. Using the enculturation stress model, the current study explains that such Islamic radicalization is a pathway of the collective response to cultural adaptation stress that most Indonesian and other Muslim immigrants face within South Korea. To conduct the study, ethnographic qualitative interviews were used. Indonesian immigrants, their Korean spouses, civilian activists, civilian aid workers, government officials, police officers, immigrant agency officials, and security officials were contacted and interviewed. Each interview lasted between approximately one and four hours. The limitations of the study are also discussed.

It Comes with the Territory: Why States Negotiate with Ethno-Political Organizations

By: Victor Asal, Daniel Gustafson, Peter Krause

Abstract: Given that minority ethno-political organizations are generally weaker than states yet seek to change their policies or remove the ruling regime from power, why would negotiation occur? States prefer to ignore or repress such organizations, which typically have little to offer in return amidst negotiations that can legitimize them while delegitimizing the state. When a challenging organization establishes governing structures and controls movement in part of a state's territory, however, it can easily inflict significant economic and political costs on the state while also possessing a valuable asset to exchange for concessions. An organization with territorial control cannot be ignored, while the state will have a strong incentive to negotiate before the state loses more face, the group gains more legitimacy, neighboring states are more likely to invade, and the international community is more likely to formally recognize any facts on the ground as a new status quo. Our analysis of 118 organizations in the Middle East and North Africa from 1980–2004 reveals that territorial control is the most important determinant of intrastate negotiation. In regards to existing scholarship, this suggests that a certain type of successful violence works—not all violence and not only nonviolence—while certain types of strong organizations—those that control territory—are more likely to reach negotiations with the state than weak ones.

Let's Play a Video Game: Jihadi Propaganda in the World of Electronic Entertainment

By: Miron Lakomy

Abstract: This article argues that video games have become a valid and increasingly significant means of jihadist digital propaganda. “Gaming jihad” has recently shown interesting alterations, mostly due to actions undertaken by the so called Islamic State and its cyber-partisans, which have discovered new ways of using this flexible and immersive medium. Similar to more conventional forms of its online propaganda, which have been imitated by other Islamist terrorist groups for years, the “Caliphate's” exploitation of electronic entertainment software may be a forerunner for the increased interest of other violent extremist organizations in this medium.

“@ me if you need shoutout”: Exploring Women's Roles in Islamic State Twitter Networks

By: Laura Huey, Rachel Inch, Hillary Peladeau

Abstract: This article investigates the social media content of women who are affiliated with the Islamic State. Throughout one year, ninety-three Twitter accounts were tracked to explore the patterns of engagement by pro–Islamic State women online and examine how these patterns illuminate the roles that pro–Islamic State women occupy on social media networks. The study reveals that women who associate with the Islamic State mostly preserve the traditional gendered role of support in the online realm. However, support is not their exclusive role and some women are active in the organization, using Twitter to recruit, promote, and even commit terrorist violence.

Wasted Words? The Limitations of U.S. Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy

By: Michael H. Creswell

Abstract: For America's foes in Afghanistan and the Middle East, triumph on the battlefield is less important than winning the battle of perceptions. In response, the United States has turned to Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy (SC-PD) to engage key audiences in ways that advance U.S. interests and to win the political-ideological contest for domestic and international legitimacy. But are these strategies effective? While winning hearts and minds is politically important, SC-PD—even at its best—is much less effective than other well-crafted and mutually supportive policies and strategies. Moreover, there are structural obstacles that greatly limit the effectiveness of SC-PD.

What Does the “Terrorist” Label Really Do? Measuring and Explaining the Effects of the “Terrorist” and “Islamist” Categories

By: Stephane J. Baele, Olivier C. Sterck, Thibaut Slingeneyer, Gregoire P. Lits

Abstract: Many scholars and practitioners claim that labeling groups or individuals as “terrorists” does not simply describe them but also shapes public attitudes, due to the label's important normative and political charge. Yet is there such a “terrorist label effect”? In view of surprisingly scant evidence, the present article evaluates whether or not the terrorist label—as well as the “Islamist” one—really impacts both the audience's perception of the security environment and its security policy preferences, and if yes, how and why. To do so, the article implements a randomized-controlled vignette experiment where participants (N = 481) first read one out of three press articles, each depicting a street shooting in the exact same way but labeling the author of the violence with a different category (“terrorist”/“shooter”/“Islamist”). Participants were then asked to report on both their perceptions and their policy preferences. This design reveals very strong effects of both the “terrorist” and “Islamist” categories on each dimension. These effects are analyzed through the lenses of social and cognitive psychology, in a way that interrogates the use of the terrorist category in society, the conflation of Islamism with terrorism, and the press and policymakers' lexical choices when reporting on political violence.

Terrorism and Political Violence (Volume 31, Issues 2 & 3)

The PKK and its evolution in Britain (1984–present)

By: Mehmet Alper Sozer, Kamil Yilmaz

Abstract: As of today, a highly mobilized Kurdish diaspora and its most prominent representative, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has become so influential in the European political arena that it might tip the balance of the European Union’s policies on Turkey in its favor. Since too much attention has been given to the PKK’s activities in Germany, the organization’s actions in Britain remain understudied, despite the fact that Britain has been a vital place in Kurdish politics and political lobbying activities. Drawing on fieldwork findings, this article attempts to explore both the evolution and the political activities of the PKK in Britain across three different timeframes, from 1984 until the present time. Our findings suggest that in Britain, the PKK has departed in recent years from its conventional terrorist activities and transformed into a lobbying power that is likely to gain full legitimacy (i.e., being de-listed from terrorist organization lists) in the near future.

The medium is terrorism: Transformation of the about to die trope in Dabiq

By: Carol K. Winkler, Kareem El Damanhoury, Aaron Dicker, Anthony F. Lemieux

Abstract: Daesh’s ability to successfully recruit foreign fighters from more than one hundred countries worldwide raises the importance of understanding the group’s strategic media campaign. Recognizing that visual images, in particular, often increase viewers’ attention, recall, and emotional response, this study of Daesh’s official magazine, Dabiq, moves beyond earlier studies primarily focused on the magazine’s textual content to analyze the group’s visual communication strategy. This study’s content analysis of the 1,144 images appearing in the magazine’s first twelve issues reveals how Dabiq has relied extensively on a historic American media trope, the about to die image, to bolster image recirculation over time. This essay examines both the form and content of Dabiq’s use of three about to die image types as they have evolved across the twelve issues. Rather than seek to win the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim public, Dabiq’s use of about to die images transforms the online medium into terrorism in ways that have lasting implications for the global culture.

Non-normative political extremism: Reclaiming a concept’s analytical utility

By: Sam Jackson

Abstract: Political extremism suffers from a definitional deficiency. This article proposes an analytical definition of the term, which avoids using extremism in a pejorative way. This definition also avoids exclusive focus on violence. This definition encourages the analyst to explicitly make the case for defining an action or an actor as extremist by comparing the action or actor to its political context. The article then explores several dimensions of an extremist political identity that can help observers understand extremist behavior and goals. It uses this conceptual framework to consider three examples of political extremism. Finally, the article concludes with some limitations and strengths of this definition of political extremism.

An analysis of spatial correlates of terrorism using risk terrain modeling

By: Ismail Onat

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to identify correlates of terrorism in space. It examines whether places with terrorist incidents show similar patterns with respect to the physical features across landscape, and tests the spatial influence of various features of environment on the incidence of terrorism. Drawing on the locations of violent terrorist offenses committed between 2008 and 2012, the study in Istanbul applies the Risk Terrain Modeling framework to terrorism. It uses data on police incidents and infrastructure (e.g., government buildings or parks). The analysis employs GIS techniques and an event count model, and combines all risky layers in a composite map to understand where the risk is higher. The study suggests a concentration of 1153 violent terrorist incidents relative to key physical factors by identifying seventeen potential risk factors, eight of which were significantly correlated in the model. Regardless of terrorists’ intent, the significantly associated establishments increase the risk in the surrounding areas where these features are located. The coexistence of leisure places such as bakeries, religious facilities, or eateries results in higher risks. While the environmental backcloth may constitute a risk for terrorism, its components may also help forecast the locations of terrorist incidents in the future.

Universal soldiers or parochial actors: Understanding jihadists as products of their environments

By: Stephen Tankel

Abstract: Why did the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra (JN)—two groups that shared similar ideological preferences and were both initially part of the Al Qaeda network—take different paths in the Syrian conflict? Part of the answer lies in the fact that JN is primarily a Syrian organization, whereas Iraqis lead ISIS. A jihadist group’s relationship to its country of origin and domicile (the two are not always the same) helps to explain that organization’s ideological preferences and alliance behavior. Yet no method of categorization based on jihadist-state relations exists. I fill this gap by theorizing an explanatory typology based on a jihadist group’s relationship with its country of origin and/or domicile. This typology consists of two tiers. The first classifies jihadist organizations based on whether they are nationally homogeneous or heterogeneous, and whether they are based in their country of origin, exile, or multiple locations. The second tier categorizes groups based on the nature of their engagement—collaborative, belligerent, or neutral—with a state. This new typology enables the generation of multiple hypotheses and has practical implications given that most U.S. counterterrorism efforts require cooperation from partner nations.

Broader, vaguer, weaker: The evolving ideology of the Caucasus Emirate leadership

By: Mark Youngman

Abstract: In October 2007, veteran Chechen field commander Dokka Umarov proclaimed the formation of the Caucasus Emirate (IK), formalising the victory of the North Caucasus insurgency’s Islamist wing over its nationalist-separatists. During Umarov’s time as leader, the North Caucasus experienced sustained violence and the IK claimed responsibility for multiple terrorist attacks in and beyond the region. However, despite the importance of ideology in understanding insurgent behaviour, the IK’s ideology and Umarov’s role in shaping it remain understudied. Using Social Movement Theory’s concept of framing to analyse Umarov’s communiqués throughout his lengthy tenure (June 2006–September 2013), this article identifies three distinct phases in Umarov’s ideological positioning of the insurgency: nationalist-jihadist (June 2006–October 2007); Khattabist (October 2007–late 2010); and partially hybridised (late 2010–September 2013). The article contributes to debates over typologies of jihadist actors by highlighting the difficulties in applying them to the North Caucasus and provides a clearer understanding of the IK’s ideological transformation and the limits to its engagement with external actors. The article also illustrates that weakness was a key factor in explaining that transformation and identifies several avenues for research that could further enhance our understanding of the IK’s ideology and the role it plays.

Interpreting text and image relations in violent extremist discourse: A mixed methods approach for big data analytics

By: Kay L. O’Halloran, Sabine Tan, Peter Wignell, John A. Bateman, Duc-Son Pham, Michele Grossman, Andrew Vande Moere

Abstract: This article presents a mixed methods approach for analysing text and image relations in violent extremist discourse. The approach involves integrating multimodal discourse analysis with data mining and information visualisation, resulting in theoretically informed empirical techniques for automated analysis of text and image relations in large datasets. The approach is illustrated by a study which aims to analyse how violent extremist groups use language and images to legitimise their views, incite violence, and influence recruits in online propaganda materials, and how the images from these materials are re-used in different media platforms in ways that support and resist violent extremism. The approach developed in this article contributes to what promises to be one of the key areas of research in the coming decades: namely the interdisciplinary study of big (digital) datasets of human discourse, and the implications of this for terrorism analysis and research.

American jihadi terrorism: A comparison of homicides and unsuccessful plots

By: Jeff Gruenewald, Brent R. Klein, Joshua D. Freilich, Steven Chermak

Abstract: While the number of American jihadi terrorist attacks remains relatively rare, terrorist plots thwarted by law enforcement have increased since September 11, 2001. Although these law enforcement blocks of would-be terrorists are considered counterterrorism triumphs by the FBI, human rights and civil liberty watch groups have conversely suggested that those who plan for attacks alongside government informants and undercover agents may be unique and essentially dissimilar from terrorists. Underlying this debate is the empirical question of how planned yet unsuccessful attacks and their plotters compare to successful terrorist homicides and their perpetrators. The current study addresses this question by comparatively examining jihadi terrorist homicides and unsuccessful plots occurring in part or wholly on U.S. soil between 1990 and 2014. Data for this study come from the U.S. Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), an open-source database with information on terrorism and extremist crimes. Based on these data, descriptive statistics are provided for several incident, offender, and target variables across three jihadi terrorist violence categories, including homicides, plots with specified targets, and plots with non-specific targets. We find several important differences across categories of terrorist violence, suggesting that unsuccessful plotters and their intended crimes vary from their more successful terrorist counterparts.

Creating the national/border security nexus: Counter-terrorist operations and monitoring Middle Eastern and North African visitors to the UK in the 1970s–1980s

By: Evan Smith

Abstract: This article looks at an earlier episode in the history of the UK border security apparatus by examining how the immigration control system was used in the 1970s and 1980s to detect potential terrorists from the Middle East and North Africa. Using recently opened archival records, it shows that the UK government introduced a strict system of visa checks, interviews, and other measures to nearly all Middle Eastern and North African visitors to the UK to prevent the entry of suspected terrorist personnel. By using these highly arbitrary measures, it became the modus operandi of the UK authorities to treat all Middle Eastern and North Africans as potential terrorists until convinced otherwise.

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology (Volume 78, Issue 2)

Islam’s Gift: An Economy of Spiritual Development

By: Asad Zaman

Abstract: According to the standard narrative, economics is an objective and scientific study of universal laws applicable to economic affairs of modern societies. After a brief introduction, the second section of the article presents a counter‐narrative that disputes this claim, and provides an alternative point of view that situates modern economics within its European historical, political, and social context. We briefly discuss why the conventional methodology of modern economics makes false claims to objectivity and universality. The third section provides an alternative methodology that is based on the recognition that human behavior is inherently and unavoidably normative, and any study of human beings and societies must take this into account. The fourth section of the article brings out the norms concealed within the foundations of modern economics, since the avowed methodology does not permit explicit and open expression of these norms. The fifth section describes Islamic views that describe the normative ideals for our personal and social lives. In particular, Islam aims at the development of the potential for excellence that every human being is born with. It does not aim at accumulation of wealth and material possessions. Nor does it aim at achievement of happiness through the maximization of pleasure achieved by consumption. The sixth section describes the transformational strategies required for spiritual progress in different dimensions of our human existence. The seventh section describes some of the institutional structures required in the economic realm to assist in the achievement of the transformation towards the normative ideals. The final section explains how we should use our unique and precious lives to aim for higher goals than mere consumption of goods and acquisition of wealth.

The European Journal of International Relations (Volume 25, Issue 1)

International misrecognition: The politics of humour and national identity in Israel’s public diplomacy

By: Rebecca Adler-Nissen

Abstract: Recognition, or the lack of it, is a central concern in International Relations. However, how states cope with international misrecognition has so far not been thoroughly explored in International Relations scholarship. To address this, the article presents a theoretical framework for understanding international misrecognition by drawing on discursive and psychoanalytical theories of collective identity formation and humour studies. The article conceptualises international misrecognition as a gap between the dominant narrative of a national Self and the way in which this national Self is reflected in the ‘mirror’ of the international Other. We argue that humour offers an important way of coping with misrecognition by ridiculing and thereby downplaying international criticism. The significance for international relations is illustrated through an analysis of the public diplomacy campaign ‘Presenting Israel’, which, through parodying video clips, mobilised ordinary Israeli citizens to engage in peer-to-peer public diplomacy when travelling abroad. Public diplomacy campaigns are commonly seen by scholars and practitioners as attempts to improve the nation’s image and smoothen or normalise international Self–Other relations. However, after analysing the discursive and visual components of the campaign — which parodied how European media portrayed Israel as primitive, violent and exotic — this article observes that in the context of international misrecognition, such coping attempts can actually contribute to further international estrangement.

Framing, resonance and war: Foregrounds and backgrounds of cultural congruence

By: Markus Kornprobst

Abstract: This article addresses the communicative processes through which leaders succeed or fail to generate public support for going to war. In order to answer this question, I rely on the framing literature’s insight that cultural congruence helps make frames resonate with an audience. Yet, my argument examines this phenomenon in greater depth. There is more to cultural congruence than selecting commonplaces such as analogies and metaphors from a repertoire that the audience widely shares. Culturally congruent framing also features a genre and more general themes that are taken out of such a repertoire. My empirical analysis of Tony Blair’s communicative moves to sway the British public to fight over Kosovo and Iraq provides empirical evidence for this framework. This study makes two important contributions. First, it highlights that public contestations about going to war criss-cross the overly neat categories proposed by most scholars interested in this phenomenon. Second, in identifying different dimensions of framing, this article deepens our understandings of cultural congruence.

Weapons of mass participation: Social media, violence entrepreneurs, and the politics of crowdfunding for war

By: Nicole Sunday Grove

Abstract: Since 2012, North American and European civilians have regularly engaged in combat operations against the Islamic State in the globalized and decentralized battlefields of Iraq and Syria. This article focuses on two aspects of this phenomenon. First, I argue that these combatants represent a different kind of fighter from both private military contractors and battlefield laborers profiled in the private security literature insofar as capital is a means rather than an end in the innovation of violence. I refer to these fighters as violence entrepreneurs. The relevance and limits of Schmitt’s writings on enmity and his theory of the partisan are examined in the context of these contemporary networks of security, mobility, and killing. My second argument centers on how online platforms for the distribution of small-scale donations to these fighters and their self-crafted missions facilitate hyper-mediated forms of patronage, where individual donors are both producers and consumers of security in ways that further distort distinctions between civilians and combatants. The imagined communities that support these combatants, both morally and financially, through the banal networks of Facebook and peer-to-peer funding platforms like GoFundMe suggest a radical deviation from conventional organizational structures and capacities for waging combat. Crowdfunding congeals these new geopolitical networks in the authorizing of individuals to determine their own singular forms of enmity, mutating the conditions of possibility for the sovereign decision.

Ritualised securitisation: The European Union’s failed response to Hamas’s success

By: Catherine Charrett

Abstract: Why and how do political leaders and bureaucrats miss opportunities or make mistakes? This article explores the pressures to conform and to perform that direct securitising decisions and practices. It begins with the assertion that the European Union missed an opportunity to engage with Hamas after the movement’s participation and success in transparent and democratically legitimated elections, and instead promoted a politics of increased securitisation. The securitisation of Hamas worked against the European Union’s own stated aims of state-building and democratisation, and increased the resistance image of Hamas. This article investigates the rituals that shaped this decision, arguing that punitive and conforming dynamics implicated the knowing of the event. Performance studies and anthropology observe how rituals let participants know how to behave in a given situation, and they performatively constitute a social reality through the appearance of normalcy or harmony. Hamas was reproduced as threat through the European Union’s compulsion to repeat a policy of conditionality, which was performative of Hamas’s ability to respond diplomatically to its own securitisation. First, at a discursive level, rituals simplify or reduce the complexity of an event by allowing participants to respond to new issues through existing regimes of intelligibility. Second, at a practice level, rituals impose an imperative to perform within the workplace, which limits the possibility for dissent or for challenging hierarchy within the institution. This investigation relies on elite interviews with senior Hamas representatives conducted in Gaza, and interviews with European Union representatives who were involved in monitoring the elections and enacting a response to Hamas’s success.

Introducing Sufism to International Relations Theory: A preliminary inquiry into epistemological, ontological, and methodological pathways

By: Deepshikha Shahi

Abstract: One of the most commonly treaded pathways to address the widely recognized Eurocentric biases in International Relations has been the initiation of intellectual efforts toward the incorporation of non-Western world views. However, the greater assimilation of knowledge produced by non-Western scholars from local philosophical-experiential vantage points — that is, the integration of Chinese, Indian, or Brazilian outlooks expressed under the rubric “non-Western International Relations” — cannot make International Relations less Eurocentric or more “Global” if the following slippery grounds are overlooked: (1) if non-Western International Relations theories employ non-Western philosophical resources for generating a derivative discourse of Western/Eurocentric International Relations theories, thereby failing to transcend the conjectural boundaries of Western/Eurocentric International Relations; and (2) if non-Western International Relations theories manufacture an exceptionalist discourse that is specifically applicable to the narrow experiential realities of a native time–space zone, thereby failing to offer an alternative universalist explanation that grants a broad-spectrum relevance to Western/Eurocentric International Relations. In the light of these realizations, the present article aims to explore if “Sufism” — as a non-Western intellectual resource — is capable of offering a fertile ground for crafting a non-derivative and non-exceptionalist Global International Relations theory. In order to do this, the article employs the insights gained from the poetry of a 13th-century Sufi scholar, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī. The article draws the conclusion that Sufism, as an established philosophy with a grand temporal-spatial global spread, upholds a “threefold attribute” — namely, epistemological monism, ontological immaterialism, and methodological eclecticism — which gives it a unique foundational status to formulate a non-Eurocentric Global International Relations theory.

Third World Quarterly (Volume 40, Issues 3 & 5)

Playing the regional card: why and how authoritarian gravity centres exploit regional organisations

By: Marianne Kneuer, Thomas Demmelhuber, Raphael Peresson, Tobias Zumbrägel

Abstract: The evidence of regional authoritarian clustering across different world regions goes together with the finding that after the end of the bipolar world regional patterns of interaction became more important. Especially in the 2000s a process of revitalisation of regional organisations and even the creation of new regional organisations took place. Interestingly, these newly founded organisations consist predominantly of authoritarian regimes. Due to the emergence and resilience of authoritarianism in the world, the question arises: To what extent do regional organisations (ROs) play a role in this phenomenon? We argue that authoritarian protagonists which we call authoritarian gravity centres (AGCs) constitute a force of attraction for countries in geopolitical proximity – and use ROs as a transmission belt and a learning room for disseminating autocratic elements. In a cross-regional comparison, based on extensive field work, we provide empirical analysis on two AGCs (Saudi Arabia and Venezuela) within their respective ROs Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP) and tackle the questions of why and how autocracies decide to move forward multilaterally within the RO.

Justifying military intervention: Yemen as a failed state

By: Maria-Louise Clausen

Abstract: The Saudi-led military intervention into Yemen began on 26 March 2015, and it has largely been supported by the international community despite resulting in the world’s largest current humanitarian disaster. The paper explores the emergence of the failed state concept, particularly as it has impacted the norm of sovereignty. It shows how being defined as a failed state can undermine the norm of sovereignty. This article argues that Saudi Arabia has utilised the failed state concept to legitimise its military intervention into Yemen by framing the intervention as necessary to establish a strong executive power and protect the Yemeni people.

European Union civil society support and the depoliticisation of Turkish civil society

By: Özge Zihnioğlu

Abstract: Despite growing critical literature on external funding, the link between EU funding to Turkish civil society organisations (CSOs) and their depoliticisation remains understudied. This article fills this gap. This article explores EU funds in Turkey and shows the incentives it creates for a depoliticised civil society. Drawing on an original set of interviews with 45 CSOs, this article analyses how Turkish CSOs interact with EU funding and how this support impacts on Turkish civil society. This article argues that EU funding’s short-term, activity-based, measurable outcome and visibility-oriented structure contributed to the depoliticisation of those CSOs benefited from EU funds.

The ICC indictment against Al-Bashir and its repercussions for peacekeeping and humanitarian operations in Darfur

By: Allard Duursma & Tanja R. Müller

Abstract: The impact of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on peace processes has received much scholarly attention. We argue, based on the ICC arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, that ICC indictments against government officials not only can be detrimental to the prospects for peace, but can also negatively affect everyday practices of peacekeepers and humanitarian workers. We draw on a combination of quantitative and qualitative data in order to develop our argument. We interrogate some measurable consequences of the indictment in relation to the work of the United Nations – African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) as well as humanitarian actors in Darfur. We do so using a data set compiled to support the work of UNAMID. We also draw on interviews with UN and UNAMID staff, aid workers, and representatives of the conflict parties. Our analysis shows that the indictment of President al-Bashir was perceived by the Sudanese government as the continuation of a confrontational approach pursued by the international community. We further show that the indictment accelerated patterns of obstruction and intimidation of peacekeeping actors, other third-party actors, and local staff associated with these. This complicated the everyday activities of peacekeepers and humanitarian efforts.

The violence of culture: the legitimation of the Israeli occupation of Palestine

By: Aneta Brockhill, Karl Cordell

Abstract: This paper considers the ramifications of the fact that a majority of (Jewish) Israeli citizens no longer considers the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territory of the West Bank to be an ‘occupation’. Informed by qualitative research conducted in Israel and the occupied territory of the West Bank, the paper argues the case for understanding of this process of social legitimation as being rooted in complex structures of cultural processes and practices grounded in ideological and religious beliefs. Identifying Zionism as an ethno-national ideology, located within the wider ethno-national impulse of nineteenth century Europe, the paper further investigates a number of cultural processes that have led to the domestic justification and rationalisation of occupation in the Israeli public consciousness and consequently, the legitimisation of continued occupation. These cultural practices are inherently highly political, constituting a long-term strategy aimed at maintaining the occupation. The paper argues that this strategy is articulated not only by cultural practices of ethnonationalism and identity politics, but ultimately by various acts and facets of violence.

Washington Quarterly (Volume 42, Issue 1)

Advice for a Dark Age: Managing Great Power Competition

By: Patrick Porter

Abstract: Not available